[00:00:00] Dan: Welcome back to the Mission Life Podcast. Today, we're thrilled to have Brian and Louise Hogan on the show. Brian and Louise have been on an incredible journey serving as missionaries since 1987. They've helped pioneer a church planting movement in Mongolia, and their work continues to impact unreached people groups worldwide.

[00:00:16] Dan: Brian is a sought after church planting coach with YWAM, and Louise is dedicated to mentoring women and training midwives at the Disciple Maker. Brian and Louise, welcome to the show.

[00:00:27] Amanda: Welcome.

[00:00:29] Dan: Thank you. So you guys have been at this since 1987. That's incredible. Tell us what first sparked your passion for the nations.

[00:00:43] Louise: Matthew 24 14. When this gospel of the kingdom has been preached to every tongue, tribe, and nation as a testimony, then the end will come.

[00:00:52] Brian: And we want to bring Jesus back. So when we discovered that he gave us a great commission and that we actually have a role in it, he expected us to carry it out and that there were still nations that hadn't heard.

[00:01:04] Brian: Unreached. unengaged people groups. We decided to get engaged and do something about reaching some of them!

[00:01:13] Dan: And so you first even went to Mongolia, wh did ministry among them t the Navajo nation, correct?

[00:01:24] Brian: Yeah, yeah. We worked with a group called Navajo gospel mission in a place in the middle of the Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona and our understanding of mission at that point, I'd say was probably at about 5 percent of what God would later reveal to us.

[00:01:41] Brian: So we just knew we were called to missions and we weren't even positive what that meant. But we were looking for any opportunity to say yes to God. And this opportunity came up to and originally was teach on the Navajo reservation. We didn't even know it was a mission group, but it was cross cultural.

[00:01:58] Brian: So we jumped at it and then we found out we were missionaries and we were like, yay, it worked for missionaries. And so, but it was out there. God had a special plan for that time because he was preparing us for outer Mongolia and the Navajo were culturally almost identical to the Mongols. Our friend said, these are Mongolians on the wrong side of the Pacific Ocean.

[00:02:22] Brian: They'd come over the land bridge from Asia and it was a perfect place to learn Mongolian culture at a time, 1987, Mongolian was completely closed to the gospel. You could not even visit there.

[00:02:34] And,

[00:02:34] Brian: God took two years getting us ready to reach out to Mongolians. And when the country did open up in the beginning of 1990, end of 1989.

[00:02:44] Brian: We were maybe the best prepared missionaries on the planet to reach out to Mongolians. Nobody else had had the experience that we had because they were totally shut off from the rest of the world. There was no way to get prepared. And so God just did something amazing without our permission, without our knowledge or consent.

[00:03:05] Brian: And it was also while we were out there that we took a class called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. And discovered what the big picture of what God was up to in the Bible and human history with culture and strategy and everything else. And it blew our minds. That's understating it quite a bit.

[00:03:28] Brian: And we realized that we wanted to be out on the ragged, bleeding edge of gospel advance. And so we redirected to Mongolia at that point.

[00:03:38] Louise: When we took perspectives, we realized that what we were doing, that it was good. But it wasn't strategic. So after taking perspectives, we actually left the mission field, went back to California, which is where we're from to figure out what next.

[00:03:51] Louise: God. Wow.

[00:03:53] Dan: Good. But not strategic. That's a really, really insightful statement right there. Amazing. And, you know, as you were talking, Brian, I'm listening to this and how you guys were the best prepared to reach outer Mongolia, but you had never been there, nor had you worked with Mongolians, but rather with the Navajo nation.

[00:04:15] Dan: I think, you know, the first that was coming to my mind is my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor my ways, your ways, and to seeing how God really took that and he did something you weren't even expected and expecting and prepared you for something that was even far. I don't want to say greater, but bigger in different ways than you had expected.

[00:04:33] Dan: And I just love how you guys were willing , to go from one thing to give God your yes and, and let him keep moving you into the places that he had for you. So how did you go from serving the Navajo nation to actually getting to outer Mongolia?

[00:04:50] Brian: Yeah. You know, there was actually, as you say it, there were quite a number of things that God did.

[00:04:56] Brian: without reading us in first on the memo. And one of them was that what we did when we were out there with the Navajo, we were dorm parents for their children in a Christian school, but our free time when all the kids were in school. We were desperate for adult company. We were, you know, away from our home church, away from all our relationships.

[00:05:20] Brian: All the other missionaries were our parents age and seemed determined to parent us, which made for uncomfortable relationships. So we just simply gotten our pickup truck and drove out and hung out with our kids families during the day. We drive down the dirt roads until we found a Navajo encampment.

[00:05:39] Brian: And You know, do all the greetings and go in and sit down for long periods of companionable silence. That's what the Navajos are big on. And if you're not willing to sit around silently, You never really get to the conversation. They'll be polite, but they never open up. And so we did that and we made friends and we got close to these people and we didn't know it, but we were planning churches.

[00:06:03] Brian: We didn't even know we were called to be church planners yet, but several churches resulted out of those hours and hours that we spent out among our Navajo friends. When we left the reservation to redeploy to Mongolia they decided they wanted to keep meeting the way they had with Brian Louise and just simply gathering around the Lord Jesus Christ.

[00:06:24] Brian: And they started churches in these encampments where, where they lived in their Hogan's, which is what they call their, their mud and wood houses. So that was really kind of exciting to see in hindsight what God had done through our just desperate need for companionship. And the other thing that God prepared us for was he actually sent a guy to our training.

[00:06:50] Brian: A family, Rick and Laura Leatherwood. And this guy was only talking about Mongolia. And at the time we had no way of even processing what he was talking about. We were just trying to learn how to be missionaries to the Navajo. and Navajo culture and language and everything. And he was always droning on about Mongolia, Mongolia, Mongolia as a fellow student.

[00:07:12] Brian: And I was just like, gosh, man, be quiet. You know, you're throwing me off there. This isn't about Mongolia. It's about you can't even go there because Brian, you don't understand. God's about to open Mongolia up wide open to the gospel. And my family and I are going to be ready. And I said, well, what are you doing here?

[00:07:29] Brian: And that's when he explained, well, these are the same people just living on the wrong side of the Pacific Ocean. And I'm here to learn Mongolian culture in the only place I possibly can.

[00:07:39] Louise: At that time, Mongolia was the last geopolitical country to get the gospel. They had no church and, and there was no believers at all.

[00:07:49] Louise: Wow.

[00:07:51] Brian: Well, I was just going to say, so it wasn't until a year later, a year and a half later, when we took the perspectives class that the lights went on and we realized what this guy had been going on about and the hook had been set. We just didn't know it was in there.

[00:08:04] Brian: You know, God had planted a seed, but he didn't tell us. And so we didn't dig it out.

[00:08:12] Dan: You know, it's so amazing how you would just go out to encampment and you would sit. And, you know, sometimes in silence and I just think about how, you know, our, our culture now is so fast and we move and we don't, we don't value. and those, those moments it becomes really awkward yet for you guys, that si of the fusion, the cement that then began to allow that are that continued o Only got the

[00:08:51] Brian: mission had been there for 50 years before we got there.

[00:08:54] Brian: It was you know, started in the 19 thirties and visits from missionaries to the encampments were not a rare thing. They had visitation ministry and everything. The big difference was the missionaries are. You know, they're driven, they've got a calling, and they show up with a program. And for the Navajo, you're just trying to sell me something then.

[00:09:17] Brian: You don't care about me unless you're willing to sit around in silence. In my presence, you know, and not talk about anything. And after a half hour, somebody might say, Oh, it's really hot out there. And you go, Oh, yeah, it is. And then you're hoping a conversational takeoff, but you get another five or 10 minutes of nothing.

[00:09:36] Brian: And it finally, it opens up because you've done the time and I'd read that in a book. And so we really forced ourselves to do it because it doesn't come naturally, especially

[00:09:49] Louise: for Brian to be like

[00:09:52] Brian: me or white folks like me. We feel like we need to fill the time with talk and But that was the secret and they so appreciate it.

[00:10:01] Brian: We were the first missionaries that had come and just sat around with them. Didn't have a program and we didn't have a program cause we just wanted to make friends.

[00:10:12] Amanda: I love that because, you know, as you've shared earlier, he were. Looking for adult conversation. So you went out the encampments for conversation, but then had to be silent to get conversation.

[00:10:25] Amanda: So.

[00:10:26] Dan: A little irony there. Isn't it? So in order to get to outer Mongolia, it sounds like if I heard some of your story, you had to actually go via China, correct?

[00:10:35] Brian: Yeah.

[00:10:35] Dan: Yeah,

[00:10:36] Brian: that was, there was only two airlines, I think, that flew into Mongolia at that time. It's like Aeroflot. And Miat, maybe there was an air China flight

[00:10:50] Louise: and,

[00:10:50] Brian: So we, we bought the tickets we could buy.

[00:10:53] Brian: It was really hard buying tickets. Cause nobody in the States had ever sold trips into Mongolia and

[00:10:58] we were

[00:10:58] Brian: moving three small children. It was. Pretty wild planning the whole trip and then at the last possible minute, we had our one way tickets into Mongolia. I mean, because we didn't have much money. We, we were with, you know, this group YWAM, which stands for youth without any money.

[00:11:16] Brian: And it's actually youth with a mission, just to clarify for the sake of the podcast. But both of them work rather well for describing. And so we bought one way tickets. And for our family of five and we were just going there. I'm going to trust God for what came after that. And the whole thing fell apart like a, with a week to go.

[00:11:37] Brian: We found out that the people who were working on getting us a visa had run into a complete brick wall, that there was no way to get us a legal way to enter the country. And we could wait for the spring and you know, all of this, but there was no way to go. And the tickets were non refundable. And so I was like, Oh no, God, what are you doing?

[00:11:58] Brian: And we prayed and we had a whole group of people pray. And it basically the word came back from so many people just go, go in faith. God's going to open every door. God's going to do miracles. Just go. And we're like, Oh man. We asked you to pray, but this is a kind of a scary answer. Cause you're not going to go anywhere.

[00:12:18] Brian: It's us that have to do this and jump off into the unknown three small little girls. And Louise had never even been out of the United States at that point. So it was, it was a real leap of faith and we went and God did, I am serious. It's in my book. There's a book called, there's a sheep in my bathtub.

[00:12:38] Brian: The whole story is recounted, but God did miracle after miracle. To get us visas to get us through the various borders all without any of the paperwork they wanted. We didn't have a letter of invitation. We didn't have a contract and we did not have return airfare, which it turns out countries really want to see.

[00:12:58] Brian: I mean, apparently except for our country, but most countries want to see that.

[00:13:07] Dan: Wow, that's, that's amazing.

[00:13:09] Just

[00:13:10] Dan: go, those are, those are really, really huge words, but so important, right? Because everything in us, particularly as, you know, as Americans, we want everything kind of worked out. We want it sorted. We want the insurance plan with everything to make sure that we're covered in case something goes a little bit wrong or drastically wrong.

[00:13:30] Dan: You know, we want to make sure we're insulated against any kind of possible scenario whatsoever. And I love how God confirmed that word to you through multiple people. And I think when God calls us into different things, he does give us that confirmation, especially when we ask for it. , And ultimately for those bigger decisions like you he confirmed that through various ways and, and that's his grace to us.

[00:13:50]

[00:13:50] Amanda: Yeah, I just wanted to ask too, for Louise, you know, for all the moms listening to this podcast, how was that for you going through those ups and downs with three young kids, , as a mom navigating that situation and really just staying anchored in your faith, and just believing, those words just go.

[00:14:11] Amanda: What was that like for you to walk through?

[00:14:14] Louise: It was scary. And honestly, for me, I, I was not excited about moving to Mongolia. I was born and raised in the Mojave desert. I love the heat. As far as I'm concerned, there's two seasons. There's summer and there's waiting for summer. I didn't know a whole lot about Mongolia, but I did know that the waiting for summer season was going to be long.

[00:14:35] Louise: And I argued with God long and hard. And then I just kept saying, are you serious, God? Do you know how cold it is there? And then I had this week where every single day, God just brought Mongolia to my face, like on the radio. Stranger in the grocery store, magazine in the mail, friend bringing me a magazine.

[00:14:56] Louise: Every day there was something about Mongolia. And so by the end of it, I was like, okay, God, I get it. I get it. Brian was super frustrated by this. Cause he's like, you said it, God. Why can't you just slap her upside the head and tell her go. But I needed that. I needed that, you know, that like every single day, just such a confirmate confirming

[00:15:16] Brian: multiple,

[00:15:16] Louise: multiple, multiple confirmations that, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do.

[00:15:20] Louise: And I'm so glad I had that. Cause it was, it was super challenging and I, and, and it was hard. I didn't, honestly, I didn't love it,

[00:15:32] Amanda: but I knew,

[00:15:32] Louise: but I knew that from God. And I knew that he, he is a good God and he, and I kept hanging on that. I kept hanging on the idea that he is good.

[00:15:43] Amanda: Yeah. No, that's so good.

[00:15:45] Amanda: That just, I, I love your honesty, you know, it wasn't candy coated. And I just, I think that's great for people to hear because obedience isn't always easy and it's not always fun. And I think believers, we need to understand that. Like God has good things for us, but part of it is. laying down of our will and our plans and that can be so difficult and challenging to, you know, as Paul talks about doing what I want to do and not doing what I, you know, the, the battle of the flesh and spirit.

[00:16:17] Amanda: But you still did it, , you still obeyed the Lord and stood in that faith and without faith, it is impossible to please God. So just to encourage all parents, especially moms out there just to trust God with your kids and with your family is that that process can be challenging, but it is worth it.

[00:16:37] Louise: Yes. And, you know, you read these glorious stories of God doing great, amazing things and, and oftentimes, you know, you just see the gloriousness of it, you know, and, and it's not the, the hard slogging of, I'm just going to keep trusting him is gritting my teeth and just getting through the next day and sometimes just the next hour.

[00:17:00] Brian: Yeah. For me, it was the revelation unwelcome, I guess, revelation that all of my heroes of faith, when they had to take these steps in the Bible or in, in church history or whatever, and they had to do these impossible things. And it was so wonderful when God moved on their behalf and shut the mouths of lions and pulled them through fiery furnaces without a scorch mark and all of this.

[00:17:26] Brian: And none of those stories give you the slightest indication of the intense fear that had their stomach in a knot. And they said yes anyway. I don't know why we think of it. They were all like, yeah, ha, good fire lions. This'll be great. Goodie, a challenge. This is going to be fun. No, it wasn't. You know, these were real people who understood every cell in their body was saying, I don't want a lion tooth going through me.

[00:17:54] Brian: That will not be nice. And they did it anyway. And so walking into these situations and feeling that and going, Oh, my gosh, other people look at this and say, a man of faith, but I'm on the inside of this earth suit saying, Yikes. God, do something else, please. You know, let's not do this. Say we did

[00:18:15] Dan: to your point.

[00:18:19] Dan: You know, you have to go back sometimes. And I'm thinking about the story about the Israelites crossing over and got to pick up these rocks from the middle of the river and stack them up on the other side. And that way you remember and your children remember, but it wasn't just to remember necessarily that crossing, but it was also to remember that he had called them out and then called them in.

[00:18:41] Dan: And I think that's really important to remember that when you are called into something, sometimes you have to go back a couple steps and remind yourself what God has spoke to you because now it might be difficult, but you remember. What God had called you. And you can, it gives you the strength and it gives you the perseverance because it gives you that foothold that foundation to stand on when it seems like everything else is shaken.

[00:19:02] Dan: So I know you felt that in so many different ways. You left kind of, you left the us, you left serving the Navajo nation, you went through China, and then you arrived in this hostile environment. Physically and spiritually. What were some of the first things you did as you began to acclimate into this environment there.

[00:19:22] Dan: I

[00:19:23] Brian: mean, look for food was the obvious one. It was right after the fall of communism and Russia had stopped sending food and Mongolia was discovering how its economy was like. 99. 8 percent Russia produced. You know, nothing was in the stores and supermarkets literally bear. We've never seen anything close to that and the worst shortages in America, and this was like nothing.

[00:19:51] Brian: And so, yeah, we, it was really interesting thing. God always provided. We never went hungry through that whole period, but

[00:20:00] Louise: we had some interesting meals.

[00:20:02] Brian: Yes, we did. Went to the only Chinese restaurant in the whole country and pick things off the menu. And they kept saying mayo, which means we don't have any.

[00:20:12] Brian: And finally we said, well, bring us what you do have. And they brought a huge plate of deep tie with. Onions, like chopped, cooked onions. That was the meal. There was nothing else, just onions. And it's like, you could imagine how excited our children were about that meal, but God always took great care of us.

[00:20:32] Brian: And we did have to like, it was great for language learning. Cause you had to go everywhere to shop, like every store in town, just to find enough. You'd find one thing, one place and another thing, another. And I actually quite enjoyed it. It was a lot like. I've never been a hunter, but it's a lot like I imagined hunting must be.

[00:20:49] Brian: And then you'd come home with your animals. I don't know. They're over the hood of the car. You're holding all these dead rabbits or something. That's how it was bringing the groceries into the apartment. It's a lot of fun. Here's what I killed today. Yay.

[00:21:04] Dan: That's awesome. And did you guys have a team that was around you with that?

[00:21:09] Dan: Or how did, how did you arrive into the city that you were in, I think it was the , third largest city in outer Mongolia at the time. That was a year

[00:21:17] Brian: in, we spent a year in the capital learning language because we couldn't get a visa to be in the third largest city.

[00:21:24] Brian: So our team. Moved up there the same week we moved into the country Magnus and Maria, a young Swedish couple that were our team leaders, moved up to Airdunet, the city that we were targeting. And they just suggested since we couldn't get you a visa for up there this year, why don't you just learn the, you have to learn the language somewhere.

[00:21:43] Brian: Learn it in the capital city, make all your mistakes, laugh along with all the natives that the, you know, silly preschool mistakes you're making with their language and then move up to air net once you have a kind of a handle on it. And so that was our plan. And so, as far as in the capital city we didn't have.

[00:22:02] Brian: Much of a team, but there were a lot of missionaries who'd come in right in the beginning, as soon as the country opened up and we had good relationships with the other missionaries. So we kind of church together and we had people over at where they weren't, they were from all different mission societies and everything.

[00:22:20] Brian: We weren't necessarily on any sort of a team. But we did have relationships and then our main thing was to make relationships with locals. So we didn't want to live with the other missionaries. They all lived in one building. When we entered the country, every single missionary in the country was in the same apartment building.

[00:22:40] Brian: And mostly because the government had caused that situation. They created a ghetto on purpose to keep the gospel away from the people.

[00:22:50] Louise: It was in a neighborhood in the capital city called Sagan, sir. No, no, no. What am I saying? Sansar, which means outer space.

[00:22:58] Brian: Yeah, they put all the missionaries in outer space.

[00:23:01] Brian: And I, and I, so when we moved in, everybody said, okay, we're getting you an apartment and building 19 in Sagan, sir. And I said, no, Sansar. Yeah, you threw me off now. I said, no, no, we're not going to live with other, Westerners. What? No, everybody does. You don't understand. You kind of have to. And I said, I'd rather live in a hotel.

[00:23:24] Brian: I will not, I did not come all the way to the ends of the earth to spend all my significant time with people just like me speaking English. We need to learn the language. And the only way we're going to do that is to be immersed in the language and the culture and bond with the people. And that's what we've been trained.

[00:23:40] Brian: So we were really firm on it. We ended up staying about three weeks in this hotel. And putting out feelers, every Mongol we met, we were like, you know, an apartment we can rent. And eventually we got an apartment. We were the first missionaries to live outside of the missionary ghetto. In an all Mongolian building.

[00:23:58] Brian: And it was great and we needed their help for everything. We didn't know how anything worked. We didn't know how to pay the utility bill. We didn't know where the shopping was or where you could get dirt for a window box to grow some flowers or anything we did. And so we were always having to call on our neighbors, people on the playground, wherever and get help from them, which was excellent for language learning and getting in with the people.

[00:24:24] Brian: We were needy

[00:24:27] Dan: when I think that's so important to because as you go in your, like you said, needy and they get a chance to help you. And so they get to know you and understand your needs and understand some of just your humanity versus, wow, these guys are coming in An agenda, they're coming in with something and they just wanna target us and, and almost see us as a product or, you know, a trophy to be won or something.

[00:24:51] Dan: Whatever it is. Right. And that's so amazing that you had that opportunity just to live. And when you live with people, you get to know people and, and there's just there's no better way to, to learn a language than to be fully immersed in that. And so I think that's. Oh, that's incredible.

[00:25:06] Brian: We've had some excellent training too, in our YOM school of frontier mission.

[00:25:10] Brian: And one of the things that had stuck with us was they said, look, either you take on a role and kind of put out there. Here's what I am. You tell people what you are, or they'll assign you a role and you won't like the role that you get assigned because they already have things in mind when they see a foreigner.

[00:25:29] Brian: And so we were told, look, a really good role to start out in is the role of learner. Tell everybody as you're learning the language. Hey, I don't know anything yet. I'm learning your language. I don't speak very much. Please help me. When you identify yourself as a learner, you are pulling yourself out of the possible assignment, assigning of the role of teacher.

[00:25:50] Brian: If you're assigned the role of teacher, you don't have much room to make mistakes. Teachers are looked up to and respected, but they're expected to know the answers. If you're a learner, you can make almost any mistake, cultural, linguistic, anything, and people will forgive you. You know it just covers a multitude of errors.

[00:26:11] Brian: And so I, I made some doozies, you know, I, I said the worst thing you could possibly say in Mongolian, the The F bomb, if you will, to a boy at a funeral. And I mean, it destroyed the funeral. People could not believe I had cussed out this little boy so thoroughly. I had no idea that it was anything wrong.

[00:26:32] Brian: I was trying to say, which one is your father? And this is something, the word, which, which I had learned the day before, which one is the banana? Which one is the orange hat can never be applied to people. If you apply it to people, it becomes this horrible curse. That's like, well, it's questioning his parenthood parentage in the, in the rudest possible way.

[00:26:55] Brian: Some like something like no one knows who your father is. You little

[00:26:58] beep,

[00:26:59] Brian: not even your mother. And so I worked this out at a funeral and the boy goes red and runs out of the room and everybody else gasps. There's this huge intake of air and nobody lets their air out there. They look like they're about to pass out.

[00:27:14] Brian: And I thought, Oh, something is wrong here. I didn't know what to do. I felt transfixed sitting there and then. It seemed like impossibly long, but somebody started laughing really loudly and the whole room dissolve into gales and gales of laughter. And I actually use that to make my exit. I was like, bye, bye, goodbye.

[00:27:36] Brian: And I ran out and they were all trying to stop me. Cause you can never let the guests leave until you've stuffed them full of food in Mongolia. But they were laughing too hard to get up and to stop me. So I made my getaway. And I asked my language tutor about what had happened. And he goes, Oh no, you didn't.

[00:27:54] Brian: I go, didn't want me. He said, you didn't ask that boy. And he says in English, who is your father? Which one is your father? And I go, yeah, you taught me yesterday. I didn't teach you that. And so it was I said, well, then they all started laughing and he got, he breathed a heavy sigh of relief and he goes, oh yeah, they remembered that thing.

[00:28:14] Brian: You tell us about, I'm just a learner. And when they realize that you're like a baby, it's really funny when a baby says a cuss word. And so, everybody realized that, they put you in that category, and then it became hilarious. And they'll be telling that story for years to come, and I'm like, oh, great. Just what I want.

[00:28:34] Dan: But I'm sure that worked out for your good. And we see that in our own lives, you know, with God, right? Like he can take anything, he can make mistakes and whatever, and work it for our good. And I love how he took, a big mistake culturally an innocent mistake and yet used it for your good and Wow, just just amazing just to hear that i'm sure relationships and potentially even Potential church members or people that probably created opportunity for you to share with them later on down the road, right?

[00:29:03] Brian: Yep. In one second, I went from being this horrible foreign monster to being my hilarious neighbor who I can't wait to tell you about what he just did. That's amazing.

[00:29:16] Dan: So how did you guys move into, , beginning to plant churches? When did you first had this idea? Wow. I think.

[00:29:23] Dan: We, we might have the makings of a church.

[00:29:26] Brian: Yeah. We had met this young Swedish couple, or I had met this young Swedish couple at a gathering in Hong Kong where we were talking about Mongolia and they were already in there. They'd been in there for three months and had come out for this meeting. And he said, we're committed to seeing a church planting movement, a spontaneous multiplication of churches, planning churches, planning churches among the majority people group in Mongolia.

[00:29:52] Brian: And he said, but we're not going to work in the capital city. Cause that's where all the missionaries are. There's already three churches been planted there this year. We want to work where no one's laid a foundation, preach Jesus, where he's never been preached before. And everything he was saying was just hitting every single.

[00:30:09] Brian: thing in my heart that God had put there. That's exactly what we're being called to do. So I ran up there and said, I'm a, I'm a part of this team. I basically joined us onto this team right there at the meeting. And so we were, we joined an existing church finding team, although it was only a couple.

[00:30:27] Brian: And so we more than doubled it, but that's how it started out. We ended up with a team with three nationalities. Swedish American and Russian planting this church in a, in the third largest city, 70, 000, a place called Airdenet. And we had, we'd all had specialized training in church planting. We actually, both the Swedish couple and Louise and I had been trained by a man named Dr.

[00:30:52] Brian: George Patterson, who'd worked down in Honduras. And he is kind of the guru, if you will, of church planting for youth with a mission. And he saw churches that just exploded and into multiplication. And he was training us to do the same thing. And in a nutshell, he was training us to simplify radically.

[00:31:13] Brian: That church is too complicated. That what we dragged to the nations is this full featured thing that we've developed over centuries here in the West, and we need to strip it down to the new Testament essentials. And take a seed and plant it in that soil, not drag a potted palm tree to the nations. And then he said, and we simply plant churches by making disciples and gathering them.

[00:31:38] Brian: And you make disciples by teaching them to obey Jesus. So he said, we need to know what Jesus's basic commands were, and then teach brand new followers to do those things. And expect them to do them from day one, you know, take a lifetime to figure it out. And it does, but you can learn all the commands of Jesus on your first day as a believer, love, love God and others give generously pray daily, make disciples, break bread repent, believe, and receive the Holy spirit and baptize and heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons.

[00:32:18] Brian: That's it. Simple as that simple.

[00:32:23] Louise: They call it church planting, but now everybody calls it disciple making movements.

[00:32:29] Brian: Yeah, because the, the language, the biblical language isn't church planning. Anyway, they didn't call it church funding in the Bible. They were simply obeying Jesus. And making disciples and you can't make individual disciples.

[00:32:41] Brian: That's a very Western idea. Disciples are made in groups called churches called ecclesias gatherings, and nobody's meant to be a disciple by themselves. The Bible doesn't even allow for that possibility in the language of the new Testament, but we're so individualistic in the West. We read things in that aren't even there in the scripture.

[00:33:04] Brian: All of those, you scriptures are actually y'all, we live in the South now. So we know that y'all means more than one person.

[00:33:12] Dan: Awesome. So I'm thinking about this biblically earlier, we were talking about crossing into the new territory. And we're talking about bringing those stones and talk about remembering God's call. Bore you and, , teaching your kids god's, God's called us. Remember what he did?

[00:33:27] Dan: Remember how he called us into it? Well, you know, I'm putting this into a biblical story that now you have this territory that, you know, God called you to take. And you've crossed into it and , you're acclimating and , you're moving past just the entry of the Capitol. Now you're moving out into this other city, this new territory that he's called Union.

[00:33:46] Dan: But taking territory isn't always easy, is it? And, and so I know this is a very challenging part of your story as well. And so I was just wondering, can you share with our listeners just what that looked like and, how you were able to, to press forward through This challenging season of ministry and serving the Lord.

[00:34:04] Brian: Moving up to Airnet to join our team we were joining a fledgling body that had started out with 14 teenage girls getting baptized and had grown now into 120 in the first year. And they were all in small house churches. And we already had appointed local believers teenage girls, because that's all we had basically turned out they, they won their friends to Christ and their friends were also teenage girls.

[00:34:33] Brian: So our church grew really rapidly in a very narrow demographic but it was really exciting. They were obeying Jesus and the church was growing. We jumped in in that point. And three months later, I think we moved in February, March, April, two months later, we experienced an outpouring. That was like nothing any of us had ever dreamed of or experienced personally before.

[00:34:59] Brian: A team short term team showed up, began to pray for the sick and many remarkable, obvious public miraculous healings took place in front of crowds of unbelievers. And people swarmed into the church. They'd never seen anything like this. They were hearing the gospel in language they could understand.

[00:35:21] Brian: And they were seeing the proof of it right in front of their eyes. Demons were being cast out. Mute people talked, deaf people heard, lame people walked. It was amazing. It was like the new Testament book of Acts stuff. And we called it miracle April, but it just continued on. Yeah. It felt a little bit like we were getting it almost too easy.

[00:35:44] Brian: Like there should have been more spiritual warfare or something in the capital city. There was a lot of oppression all the time. You felt it. You felt that the demonic realm was not happy with your presence. And there was attack in air net. It felt like the air was clean. Like there were no principalities hovering above you or anything.

[00:36:04] Brian: It was just, wow, this is great here. And visitors would say that. You know, they would just go, I can't believe it. This is so different from the Capitol. We were like, yeah, it's great here. And we kind of thought, wow, everything we do kind of turns to gold. I don't know. It's just easier here. And what it was, I really believe now that God knew he wanted to start something where the enemy was not focused at all.

[00:36:31] Brian: This was an end run, a flanking maneuver where the enemy hadn't posted any lookouts. There was not even one believer in all of Airdonet when we went there, there was zero missionaries in Airdonet, and so it wasn't on the enemy's radar, and things really got going there, and almost two years before the counterattack came, and when it came, it came like an overwhelming Tsunami.

[00:36:59] Brian: We had a baby born there. Our fourth child was born in our apartment in Airdnet. And on the day Louise gave birth to baby Jedediah, our first son all hell broke loose. We had completely under attack from every direction. We had four cult groups move into town that week. We went from no opposition to four groups attacking the believers, looking for them wherever they could find them at home, at school, in the workplace and deceiving them.

[00:37:30] Brian: We had the government started a campaign to kick it, not only kick us out of our apartment out of the country to cancel our visa and Marcus persona non grata, not allowed back. Somebody had published a magazine article about us in the states and it had gotten back to the government in Mongolia that we were missionaries.

[00:37:51] Brian: And so they wanted to get us out. We had believers leaders just fall in sin and have to be removed from ministry. We had other people just cut off relationship and walk away with no excuse given impossible to talk to them.

[00:38:05] Louise: We had a church split. We had a hundred people leave angry at us.

[00:38:09] Brian: Yeah, a church split in a church that had just celebrated its first anniversary with 120 believers and had grown a bit well because it'd been a year, so we're probably at 300 at this point and 100 of them left and it tore families into and they joined one of the cult groups.

[00:38:28] Brian: And it was absolutely awful in every way. And for two solid months, it got worse every day. We'd meet as a team and just cry. And it seemed like there wasn't going to be anything left. It was so devastating that it seemed like the church wasn't going to even survive in any recognizable form. We began to talk about moving somewhere else and starting over.

[00:38:50] Brian: And we didn't toward the end of December when we were having these kind of talks we didn't think it could get any worse. But it did on Christmas Eve, we woke up and found that our infant son had died during the night. Sudden infant death syndrome. And it was like waking to a nightmare.

[00:39:08] Brian: Another girl in the church died two days later. And so there were two deaths within a three day period. And it was like the attack had gone to a level that we hadn't even dreamed of. Jesus said that Satan was a liar thief and a murderer from the very beginning. And I never really thought much of the murderer part.

[00:39:28] Brian: I know if I. Came across it. I might think, Oh, the Holocaust or something like that. But this cowardly enemy that comes in and kills your most vulnerable members of the body. And these two deaths stunned the church. Even, I mean, we were in shambles anyway, and it just, it was unbelievable. We prayed over his body.

[00:39:50] Brian: We asked God to return him to life and it didn't happen. We'd had a girl raised from the dead in the church about four months previous. During this whole outpouring, so we knew it could happen, but it didn't and three days later on December 28th, we found ourselves hacking a grave into the frozen soil of a hillside just out of air net.

[00:40:13] Brian: and burying the body of our son there. And a piece of our hearts and a lot of our dreams. And we went back into the city. It was so cold out there. It was negative 40 on the hillside when we buried our son. Unbelievably cold.

[00:40:29] Louise: Our tears froze on our faces. Wow.

[00:40:32] Brian: And we went back into the city and there was a memorial service first to kind of a reception at our house and then a memorial service, the church had planned.

[00:40:43] Brian: It was Mongolian custom. So we had this meal, we didn't have to cook it, but they brought a meal to our house and we serve food to everybody who came by and then and just sat in our living room and talked with our guests. And then we went to this memorial service at a rented discotheque, which was called the woman's palace and had a disco ball hanging from the ceiling.

[00:41:06] Brian: So that was a little surreal, but we used it for a lot of things like Bible studies and things like that. And it was at this memorial service. Partway through, I felt compelled to go up to the stage and say something, and I didn't have any kind of a planned role in it at all other than grieving dad and to sit there, but I went up and they handed me the mic and I didn't even know what I was going to say.

[00:41:28] Brian: I said, I don't know what you guys are going to do. I don't know if you're going to make it or not. Doesn't look good for this church said, but I can tell you one thing our enemy who's been attacking us so hard as you all know. Yeah. Has gone too far. With these two deaths, he's crossed the line and we were planning on leaving.

[00:41:45] Brian: We were planning on moving away, but this tears it. There's no way we're going anywhere. We're going to stay here and we're going to tear apart the enemy's kingdom limb from limb. And if he doesn't like it, he'd better kill all of us. Because this is war. And as I spoke those words, something happened to every Mongolian in the room.

[00:42:11] Brian: I mean, as a people, they were made, they were designed for war. The last time they got really excited, they took over most of the known world. You know, in the 1200s under Genghis and something happened and it rose up in the mongols, felt it, ran forward and grabbed the mic and called, they said at this moment, we all stopped eating and we're going to war.

[00:42:36] Brian: You heard what Brian said. We're going to war. And the whole church went into fasting and prayer. We divided up into groups. We went to the high points over the city. After a bit, the cold drove us inside and we were praying in apartments all over town. And we prayed all the way through that day, through the afternoon, into the evening, through the night.

[00:42:57] Brian: At 3 a. m. there was this loud, in the room where I was, there was this loud cracking noise, like wood cracking in a totally still forest. And everybody looked up. We all looked around to see who had broken their chair. And nothing had happened. And we, it became kind of almost awkward and uncomfortable.

[00:43:16] Brian: Nobody knew what to say. And they were looking at me, they were looking at Magnus like, okay, what do we do? And I just could, all I could think of was that scripture. And is it in one of Solomon's books where it says Proverbs, even a fool can appear wise if he keeps his mouth shut. And I thought, well, that's all I can pull off right now is to appear wise.

[00:43:37] Brian: So I'm going to keep my mouth shut. I don't know what's going on. And I didn't say anything. And a new believer. After a while, long, painful silence raised his hand and we're like yeah, didn't even know his name yet. He was really new. And he goes, does this mean we can go home now after all these hours and hours of praying?

[00:43:58] Brian: And it's like Yeah, we have to sing a song first and then we could go home because even though he didn't know how to sound cool and spiritual, I do. And Christians always sing a song before they go home. So we sang a song and we all went home and we found out the next day, every single prayer meeting and the whole city had gone home at 3 AM.

[00:44:19] Brian: They'd all gotten the same memo. It's over. Jesus broke the attack. It is absolutely over. And we went home, got the rest of the night's sleep, woke up the next day. And Jesus began to repair all that damage. I can share some stories, but this one is just so powerful. A hundred people from the church split all 100, not one missing, came back in a group to Magnus's apartment, weeping and begging to be restored to fellowship.

[00:44:50] Brian: They left the cult. All of them. We didn't lose one person in this whole thing. I mean, except for the two deaths, which were already healed in eternity, Jesus healed every hurt the church took during this long period, these two months. And he did it in a couple of weeks. It was amazing. And the church began to grow again, but there was a cost.

[00:45:11] Brian: A friend of ours said this, he said throughout the ages, whenever the kingdom advanced, someone first had to pay a terrible price. And we certainly found that to be the truth in Mongolia to start a movement among the Mongols. There was a terrible price that had to be paid. And there's a grave on that Hill outside of air net.

[00:45:33] Brian: That's the first missionary grave in the modern history of Mongolia. And we had no idea that that was part of our story. Going into it, you know, I'm glad God doesn't tell us our story in advance. I don't know who would be brave enough to live out their story if they knew all the details in advance, but God's merciful and he gives us what we need when we need it.

[00:45:55] Brian: He was there with us through all of this. And he's done such amazing things since then through our loss and the grief that we walked through in front of the Mongolians. It just never ceases to amaze me. As I hear testimonies from Mongolians 30 years later. About how this impacted them and changed everything for them.

[00:46:17] Brian: And when Louise was saying earlier how hard it was for her, I just wanted to say it, that one of the most amazing things may be miraculous for me. And cause it's so close to me as I walked with all of this for Lou, with Louise, I didn't feel it the same way she did in terms of how just difficult it was being a wife and a mother.

[00:46:38] Brian: In Mongolia where everything was a thousand times harder than back home in suburbia. And she had a really hard time and had to cling to the Lord a lot and go out on walks and just say, God, where are you? And all of this. It was really super hard. And one of the most amazing moments to me was years later, maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago now we were just looking back, I think, sitting with some people talking, looking back on it and, and kind of recounting what God had done and what he'd done since then and everything, and Louise said.

[00:47:14] Brian: You know, if I was asked to, I do it all again. And I couldn't believe that. Cause there were times where I had to hide her passport. She was a flight risk, but that just what God does as you pass through some of the deep waters of your life, you know, some of the hardest things that you're going to have to walk through.

[00:47:37] Brian: And then you look back and you see God there. I mean, it's really hackneyed, but there's that poem footprints on the beach and it's like they look back and they see two sets of footprints, you know, and, and anyway,

[00:47:51] Louise: there's one

[00:47:52] Brian: set of footprints, that's when I carried you, but it's, even though it's a kind of a cliche poem, it's getting at that thing that when you look back at the hard times, if you've continued if you've hung on to relationship with Jesus.

[00:48:08] Brian: Which is the main goal of this life. Then you see it differently. Then it, then it comes with this glow of glory. And both of us feel like, even though those were some of the hardest things we've ever walked through, we do it again. If Jesus asked us to, there's three words on our son's gravestone, the Mon the Mongols have put up a monument on our son's grave at their expense, which blessed us so much.

[00:48:35] Brian: And on that, it has his name and the dates And then it says underneath that, Jesus is worthy. And for us, that's the takeaway from the whole thing. Jesus is worthy of anything you or I could be asked to walk through in this breadth of a life that we have. Because the stuff that he's asking us to do counts for all eternity stuff.

[00:48:58] Brian: The Holy Spirit is putting on your heart is the stuff that lasts. It's the stuff that you will have a never have a moments of regret over all the stuff that you're coming up with. You'll probably have lots of cause to regret ever thinking of it, but the stuff that God gives you is pure gold.

[00:49:14] Dan: Was listening to you share the story of you at the gathering after you returned from your son's grave. I was at this picture of you standing on the podium and just sharing what you shared. And like, before I even heard the end of the story, it was just, I had this picture of you and it was like this visualization of you blowing the Shafar which signaled like, , Hey, , we're going to war.

[00:49:42] Dan: We're gathering , and also a proclamation of victory. And I love how all of that, really just happened right there. And how that happened, not just in your location, but broadly as well. And so just, wow, thank you so much for being faithful and and continuing on because so many, especially even nowadays, we're seeing so many different people fall away.

[00:50:04] Dan: From the faith because, you know, things get challenging, things get hard. You know, we all go through challenging situations, but not many people have walked the road that you have walked. And we just want to say thank you so much for being faithful and to continue to share that story because it helps us all know, man, God , he is worthy he is worthy , of what we walked through.

[00:50:25] Dan: And, that really touches me. I'm also thinking about how rewinding. You went to first of the Navajo and you said, man, we understood about five percent above church planning and discipleship making. And so I'm just wondering, like, how did your time in Mongolia, how did that shape your understanding of discipleship and indigenous church plan?

[00:50:45] Dan: Because certainly this was a huge time in, you know, God cultivating that in you, and you cultivating that in the nation of Mongolia.

[00:50:53] Louise: I don't know how to answer that. , I remember reading the books of Paul in his epistles a lot, because he walked out what we were doing. We were so fortunate because we had this training that we'd learned from George Pat Patterson and there were certain things that we just really hung on. Like every, everybody needs to participate and it needs to be as simple as possible.

[00:51:20] Louise: And we just kept doing that. And one of the roles that Brian and I had on our team. Because we didn't have the language as well as Magnus and Maria. They speak Mongolian fluently. They're excellent at it. It was like their third or fourth language, and we really struggled with it. So they were more head in the dirt, actually, day to day stuff, whereas we were more kind of looking into the future and saying, okay, this is where we want to go.

[00:51:44] Louise: We want to see an indigenous multiplying church among the majority of people of Mongolia. How do we get there? We kind of do the envisioning thing. It's like, we want to know, we want to come cut account back from what we want to see. So we're every week when we would get together with our teammates, we'd say, okay, what did you do this week?

[00:52:06] Louise: And then we'd challenge him. It's like, okay, could you pass that off to somebody? Is there somebody you know that you could teach them how to do that and then pass it off. So. After three years, three and a half years, we had gotten to the point where we weren't doing anything. We had worked ourselves out of a job because everything we did, we did as simply as possible that if we did it, we, our, our goal was like we would do something and we'd want them to be able to say, oh, I can do that.

[00:52:36] Louise: And then we got to the point where we'd say that they would say, oh, I can do that and I can do it better than you. Yeah. So we would do things sometimes kind of not really good, just so that they could come along and say, Oh, I know a better way to do that. And if I like, yes, run with it, please go. And so, then we get to this point where I went, we went around and asked everybody at our team meeting, what did you do this week?

[00:52:56] Louise: And we realized that nobody had done anything and then we were like, okay. We can, it's time for us to hand the authority of this church over to the local people. Cause we don't need to be here. If we're here, they're just going to constantly look to us to do it. And we want them to take it on for themselves.

[00:53:14] Louise: And in the years past, you know, we've talked to some of those leaders and they were, they are like, Oh, we were not ready, but you still, you made us do it.

[00:53:24] Brian: Yeah. I, I think what we learned there just through experience continues to inform. Our daily lives, not just in the training we do of others, because we train people to plant churches. But we have a small, we live here in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the church we go to, which is a big church called New Heights asked us to do a small group of a community group, I think they call them.

[00:53:50] Brian: And So we we told them, we said, okay we'll leave this, but it's going to be different. And they said, oh, we know that we thought about it before we asked you guys to do it. I don't think we've been shrinking violets about our views of church. And we just really believe that church really happens in the small face to face gatherings that, you know, most of us have those opportunities in our churches.

[00:54:15] Brian: Whatever church you go to, there's, there are opportunities to get together with other people and be intentional about relationship and everything, but we haven't been trained to think of those as church. We think of those as extras and church is this Sunday morning sitting in rows thing. And we see it the exact opposite way.

[00:54:34] Brian: We think, you know, the cake is these small groups and the frosting is Sunday morning. I'd rather eat cake without frosting than a bowl of frosting without any cake. So we started leading this group and we just organized it as a, as simple church gatherings. We didn't tell the people this is church, you know, or whatever, but we, we say, okay, everybody's going to bring something.

[00:54:55] Brian: And we have this simple little acronym called POETS. And P stands for praise, O, one another ministry, E, eat or break bread T is talk to God, and S is scripture. And we have a little schedule that awards those out every week, and so everybody comes with something to share with the whole group. And it's all gotta be participatory.

[00:55:19] Brian: You don't bring a sermon. If you've got scripture, you actually bring a Bible story and help people act it out or something like that. And it's been so good. And when I, we first instituted it, there was some grumbling and the group wasn't used to it. They were used to watching. Like teaching videos together at somebody's house and then talk about them or like, no, we're never going to do that again.

[00:55:40] Brian: Sorry. If you like it, do it at home. But they were, there was a little bit of grumbling. I said, we'll just do this. I've made the schedule up for a couple of months and then we'll reevaluate. So we got to the end of it. I said, I just said, what do you guys want to do now? We're done with that. And they said, what do you mean?

[00:55:56] Brian: We want to keep doing that. The poets thing. I'm like, no, I thought you didn't like it. Oh no. We like it a lot. Everybody gets to do something and we learn so much more and we really appreciate our, the gifts and our brothers and our sisters, and we never knew. And it was like, wow. And so now it's more than a year later and we're still doing it.

[00:56:17] Brian: No, just really appreciating. How a church can be simple and easy to pass on to others. It doesn't have to be this complicated thing that takes religious professionals to run it like a finely tuned machine.

[00:56:31] Amanda: Yeah. And there's something so powerful when, you know, you're in that small group setting and, , reading scripture out loud together and studying it together, , it's like it multiplies because someone might get revelation on one thing and.

[00:56:47] Amanda: You know, someone else gets a different angle and then you put that all together and, you know, and then even talking about things, you know, you learn like. When you're learning someone's name for the first time, if you speak it three times in a conversation, it helps commit it to memory. So with scripture, when you're sharing and speaking it out loud in a group, you're going to remember it.

[00:57:09] Amanda: And not only that, but even talk about it the next week. So that's such a amazing model.

[00:57:16] Dan: I think it's just one of the most beautiful examples of kingdom because in the kingdom, everyone's included, right? No one's excluded.

[00:57:23] Amanda: Yes.

[00:57:24] Dan: And I just love that beautiful example of what you, what you've got led you to create through that of just, Hey, you have a place.

[00:57:32] Dan: They're the place for you. It's okay. Come just take this part. You don't have to do too much. We got this among all of us. And that's, that's really what the church is meant to be, that we're all supposed to be, to have our place and to have our role. And you know, I'm the arm, you're the leg and we move together and we have our being and we, and we advance the King together.

[00:57:51] Dan: And so I just find that. Truly, truly inspiring. And man, what a, what a blessing that your church gets to Receive from some of the fruit that God has born in you and through you through these years and through these challenging experiences and life experiences too, not just the hard experience, but the the beautiful interweaving of Scripture into real life and building his kingdom.

[00:58:15] Dan: on continents throughout the world. And, and what a blessing that people that are walking with you this season, they get to receive from them. I know some of this is documented in a in a couple of books. And I'm really curious. I know that you've shared briefly about your there's a sheep in my bathtub, but there's a second book as well.

[00:58:31] Dan: And so I was wondering if you could share briefly about your two books, especially the second one. I know there's gotta be some stories to that one as well.

[00:58:39] Brian: There's three books, but

[00:58:41] Dan: three books. Yeah,

[00:58:43] Brian: So there's a sheep in my bathtub is the story of what God did in Mongolia and that we've talked a bit about here and it's being made into a movie, which was really surprising to us.

[00:58:54] Brian: A guy called us up. A guy has worked on the chosen and war room and fireproof some of Christian movies. And he said, I want to make your book into a movie. His wife, who's Mongolian, had read it in its Mongolian translation and then told him, you've got to read this book. And he said, I don't read Mongolian.

[00:59:13] Brian: He's an American guy. And she said, Oh, I'm pretty sure it was in English before it was in Mongolian. So he hunted it out and read it and then called me. And so he's, yeah, he's working on the movie treatment of it. And that's exciting. Here's that book. And that's, this one is sold well over a hundred thousand copies.

[00:59:33] Brian: It's It's done really, really well for a missions book anyway. And it comes with a guarantee. You will laugh out loud and you will cry real tears. Or your money's cheerfully returned and you can keep the book. So if you're really hard hearted, this is a great chance to scam a free book off of me.

[00:59:51] Brian: It's in, it's in Mongolian and Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish as well. This is my second book an A to Z of near

[01:00:09] Brian: died. So I made a list and it turned out it was quite a long list. And then I alphabetized it, which is a feature in Microsoft word. I just hit the alphabetized button and I go, wow, there's chapters for a book here. I've got almost all the letters. And so made it into 26 standalone stories. About the these near death experiences and it's, it's fun.

[01:00:34] Brian: It's adventurous. It's funny. And spoiler alert, the author lives he doesn't die. Yeah. But that one I usually use as a teaser that Kay. Each one has a letter, you know, A is for abyss, B is for bear, C is for cliff. It goes on like that. K is for kidnapping. And I was kidnapped when I was nine years old by a notorious child kidnapper in LA and God miraculously saved me from this guy.

[01:01:03] Brian: He kidnapped 21 boys. And when they caught him, I had to testify in court against him. It was terrifying. And I, for years, I thought he was going to crawl through my window and kill me. But years and years and years later just in 2011, when my mother died, They sent me a box of her papers and I had come to believe that it had never happened.

[01:01:26] Brian: Actually, I had convinced myself I'd never been kidnapped and that it was my imagination because no adult ever talked to me about it. The day that after the trial, it was never mentioned again in our household. So I just thought, oh, that was just my imagination. Wow. It's so vivid too. Cause you know, if you're a kid, if adults don't talk about something, it isn't real.

[01:01:49] Brian: And so anyway, when I found in my mom's papers, I found the subpoena and realized this really happened. Here's the guy's name. I looked him up online and found him on Megan's list, which is a sex offenders site. And went to his house in LA, sat across the street, my rental car, and just waited. And he finally came out and I ran over.

[01:02:10] Louise: Brian was stalking his kidnapper.

[01:02:14] Brian: Not allowed to be there. He kidnapped me first. So anyway, I ran over, stuck my hand out and said, hi, I'm Brian. And he shook my hand and said, I'm Tom, do I know you? And I said, no, but you should. You kidnapped me when I, in 1971. And the color just drained out of his face and he looked terrified.

[01:02:36] Brian: And right at that moment, well, I wish I had time to tell you, but it's in chapter K. There you go. Of Near Death Adventures. And you can read about it. Okay. Maybe some people order it. It's on our website or Amazon. A to Z of Near Death Adventures by Brian Hogan. Keys to Church Planning Movements. This is a book that tells how we went about planning churches among the unreached.

[01:03:01] Brian: And it's by Kevin Sutter, who I worked with in YYM. I was the editor for it. And this is basically just George Patterson's stuff made in really easy format with these cartoons of a first century church planner named Stephanas and his team. Really great discipleship manual. If you want to learn how to make disciples.

[01:03:22] Brian: and don't want a very thick book to teach you how to do it. This is the ticket.

[01:03:26] And that

[01:03:27] Brian: one's really inexpensive. And then my third real book is A Life in the Saddle. And this is the story of a 19th century missionary and church planner. He was a missionary to the Cherokee tribe and a church planner with the Cumberland Presbyterians.

[01:03:42] Brian: He was a circuit rider and rode from community to community on the frontiers. Planning churches and bringing the word of God. And he just, he served Jesus for like 60 years. Just an amazing man. Went as a missionary in his late seventies and had an amazing work among the Cherokee and was so beloved there that people used to name their kids.

[01:04:05] Brian: Hogan as a first name after Davy Hogan, this missionary. He was a distant relative of mine and I found his diary or his life story memoirs typed out in 1899 and I decided to bring them into the modern world. And so this book is full of pictures and on site research that I did all over the place.

[01:04:27] Brian: Following his life from the Cumberland gap of Kentucky to Oklahoma and the gold fields of California. He was a 49er, went to the gold fields. A civil war was fought on his ranch. Amazing story of faithfulness to Christ. So there's the pitch.

[01:04:47] Dan: Listeners will have those in the show notes, as we're coming to a close.

[01:04:50] Dan: I'd love to ask you one more question. What advice would you give to someone who feels called to missions, but doesn't know where to start?

[01:04:58] Brian: Oh, that's a great question. And we actually haven't, we're asked that a lot. We end up doing a lot of mission conferences and mobilization, they call it events and stuff.

[01:05:08] Brian: And people either come up and talk to us about their kids who are thinking they want to head into missions or even themselves. And a lot of people later on in life are like, okay, I've done what I thought I was supposed to do. And now. That's over, but I feel like God has something for me and I've still got a bunch of life left and what can I do?

[01:05:27] Brian: So we always tell people the most important thing you can do is kind of get, don't do it the way we did, where you leap out into missions and hope that you figure it out once you're doing it. It's like building an airplane in the sky. It's probably not the best strategy So we really recommend that people take the class perspectives on the world Christian movement or one of its clone classes like the Kairos course or mission of God you can find these online And there are courses that give you what I call the big picture.

[01:06:04] Brian: What has God up to? What has he been up to since the very beginning? Does he have an unchanging purpose? It turns out he does and he's been working at the whole time and it's the family business. It's what he's inviting us into. And the end of the story is all about the end of this task, this mission of every single tribe and tongue and nation coming in before the throne of the lamb.

[01:06:29] Brian: And so getting that, getting the biblical basis of mission. So you really understand it. You're not just doing it to do something for God. You understand what God is doing and you're coming in alongside dad, you're going to work with dad. And then the seeing it through the rest of human history, cause the Bible ends in, you know, 60 or 70 AD.

[01:06:51] Brian: And then what happened after that? Well, God's been doing the same thing ever since. And so getting a sense of that, how the word of God really continues, not necessarily written down in Bible form, but it, God continues unabated to reach the nations. And then there's two perspectives, the cultural, where we learn about all the barriers and what, you know, what makes it interesting, what makes it hard that the people who have yet to hear are not like us and not that accessible.

[01:07:19] Brian: We have to cross boundaries and barriers to get there. And then strategy, how do we do it? You know, there's so many ways there's. Gospel radio and there's relief and development. And there's there's more traditional missionary teaching and there's church planting and evangelism and all of these things.

[01:07:38] Brian: So what is, how do we do that? Bible translation and looking at the strategic dimensions of the task in front of us and It's 15 weeks. If you take the full perspectives class, it's like a college level class, but man, you'll understand everything differently and you'll really be able to process the guidance you're getting, you know?

[01:08:01] Brian: So that, that's our recommendation that there's probably nothing you can do. And maybe you could put perspectives. org as one of the on the show notes. Yeah. So people who click over there. It's offered all over the U. S. So they could see on the map which one is near them or in their city.

[01:08:19] Dan: Wow. And how can our listeners follow your journey?

[01:08:22] Dan: Do you have a website or do you have any social media handles? How can they connect with

[01:08:26] Brian: you? Do we have mainly through the website? I haven't been really keeping up on social media. It may be a generational thing. I'm like, I understand it. I just

[01:08:39] Don't care.

[01:08:41] Brian: There's some honesty. But anyway, somebody else will Twitter.

[01:08:45] Brian: It'll be okay. So I have a, we have a website ministry website. Our ministry is called Disciple Making Mentors. And so the website is four, number four D M M the initials, disciple making mentors for DMM. org. So just real simple. And we've got other teaching things. There's videos on there that I put up for free.

[01:09:09] Brian: If people want to see some teachings on other subjects and that links to all sorts of good stuff. Our books are up there. And a project

[01:09:19] Louise: that we're working on right now, we have seven unengaged mentors. Unreached people groups. So these are people groups that have they have nobody working with them.

[01:09:28] Louise: They're completely no gospel. No Church, no very few believers And they're all mongol. They're all related to mongolia in some way shape or form. Most of them are in china They're very hidden. They're very hard to get to and so there's a organization that we put together these prayer cards So we can be praying for these people because that's the first start when you're looking to see an unreached people group reached or an unengaged people reached.

[01:09:54] Louise: But our main focus is raising up the Mongolian church to go to these people groups because these people groups are, like I said, they're all almost all in China. And the Mongolians can go into China without a visa. They still like we've sent several teams in on scouting trips to try and find out where these peoples are on praying trips.

[01:10:16] Louise: And the Mongolians have run into all kinds of issues and problems. Even I was surprised because I mean, they look. They look Asian, right? But they know the Chinese government knows who they are. And they, they're, they got asked, there was one team that got asked to leave the, they couldn't even find a hotel room.

[01:10:33] Louise: They wouldn't even let them stay in a hotel room. And another guy was out there doing some filming and they came and took all of his, everything that he had filmed. And I loved his response. It wasn't like, okay, well that was scary. And I'm never doing that again. No, his response was, oh, next time I'll just be sure to.

[01:10:49] Louise: Load that up to the cloud right away so they can't take it from me. So yeah, we're raising up Mongolians to go to these people groups, but if you're interested, you can get one of our prayer cards and pray for them.

[01:10:59] Brian: Yeah. That's available on the website. Also, we have updates that we do edit with this code there.

[01:11:06] Brian: So we have up to date information on what's going on with each one of these seven unengaged groups. So it's one of these rare things where you're asked to pray about something and you're actually able to see your prayers being answered. Most of the time, somebody comes through, ask you to pray and you pray for six and seven years or something.

[01:11:27] Brian: And then you go, I guess that's over. I don't know. I never heard anything else about it, but this is different. You know, we really want you to feel a sense of partnership in this. And so that's available on our website

[01:11:40] Louise: because we're, we're getting down to the last of the unreached people groups, and these are the hard ones.

[01:11:45] Louise: These are the ones that, you know, Hawaii has been reached. All the fun, easy ones have been reached. So now we're at the hard ones that are very hidden that are hard to get to that are that are maybe in scary places. And so it's going to take more work.

[01:12:01] Dan: Amazing. Well, what an honor to have you guys on the show today to hear your hearts, to hear your story, to hear how God is. Has worked in you and through you and continues to work in you and through you to see Nations reached tribes the and the last to hear the gospel and for you guys to Be part of you said bringing jesus here because you guys are ready to to bring jesus here And I think that's the heart of all of us.

[01:12:25] Dan: And so thank you for your faithfulness to the task Thank you for not giving up And we just encourage you guys we speak blessing over everything you put your hand to And we just pray that you have favor and all of it and may you bear much fruit

[01:12:39] Brian: Thank you for

[01:12:40] Louise: asking and listening.

[01:12:42] Brian: Yeah. Thank you very much.