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Living Love in Living Hell | Dave Eubank
Episode 164 • 6th June 2024 • Inspired... with Simon Guillebaud • Great Lakes Outreach
00:00:00 01:09:55

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Former US Army Special Forces officer Dave Eubank tells of multiple near-death experiences as he risks life and limb across a number of nations - training teams to resist the military dictatorship in Myanmar, fighting against ISIS in Mosul, and also providing emergency relief and intervention in other desperately grim hotspots around the globe. He spends most of his time in Myanmar, having founded the Free Burma Rangers two decades ago as a humanitarian service movement for oppressed ethnic minorities. He gives all glory to God, and what a story it is!

The Free Burma Rangers film on Amazon Prime is worth downloading, it had me in tears multiple times.

Contact Dave at eubank@pobox.com

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Transcripts

Dave:

And we run behind this tank, which works in a movie, but not in real life.

Dave:

And now you're completely exposed to the sides and over the top to enemy fire.

Dave:

And it's terrifying, thick white cloud in front of us, obscure ices.

Dave:

Ice is shooting, but they can't see us now.

Dave:

I run out, I get the girl to pull her off her mother because she's

Dave:

clinging to her dead mother.

Dave:

I was on this rubble shot and I fell or I just tripped.

Dave:

I don't know, but I went down, but I never let go of her.

Simon:

Welcome everybody.

Simon:

This is Simon Guillebaud with Inspired.

Simon:

Inspired if you're new to us is all about meeting mates of mine.

Simon:

Who are doing beautiful stuff from different walks of life around the globe

Simon:

Basically to counteract all the negativity and grimness that we get when we watch.

Simon:

Basically if you watch the news 24 7 you are allowing someone else to curate all

Simon:

the bad stuff that's going on So you'll end up more depress, cynical or anxious.

Simon:

That sort of thing.

Simon:

So we want to stir faith.

Simon:

And so today's a chance to meet an an incredible brother.

Simon:

The connection, actually he's not a mate of mine.

Simon:

Hopefully I can claim him as a buddy by the end of this hour together,

Simon:

but he has a connection through a very good friend, Brian Klager, who

Simon:

is on my US.

Simon:

board of trustees,

Simon:

and also you've just

Simon:

been out to Burundi a whole bunch

Simon:

of times, and he said, from a military background and

Simon:

stuff, he said, you've got to get along my friend Dave, you bet.

Simon:

He's just, he's absolutely nuts and doing stunning stuff.

Simon:

And so I've checked you out.

Simon:

I've watched the Amazon Prime documentary and.

Simon:

Dave, it is incredible.

Simon:

Founder of the Free Burma Rangers, I've tracked you down we got you out

Simon:

of the jungle in Myanmar, now on a beach with the fan whirring, it's very

Simon:

hot in Thailand, and we're trying to keep the kids quiet in the background,

Simon:

so I hope it's going to work, but anyway, I'm really excited about this.

Simon:

Welcome, Dave.

Dave:

Thank you, Simon, and God bless you.

Simon:

Yeah it's so good to have you.

Simon:

So you're born in Texas, but raised in, in Thailand with, by missionary parents.

Simon:

You've got a crazy backstory and you've got a crazy current life.

Simon:

I'm really grateful for your time, brother.

Simon:

So listen just paint us a picture of your childhood to kick us

Dave:

off.Thanks again, Simon.

Dave:

Whoever listens, I think my mother says God has friends everywhere and

Dave:

he likes them to meet each other.

Dave:

So I just got to meet Simon and through this podcast, in

Dave:

a way, we'll meet each other.

Dave:

Around the world.

Dave:

I was born in Texas, but when I was nine months old my parents moved from Texas

Dave:

to Thailand to be missionaries My father had fought in the Korean War and then was

Dave:

in the oil business and my mother was an actress on Broadway also at Drury Lane

Dave:

theater in London and both of them actress and oil men left their professions married

Dave:

each other and Jesus led them to Thailand.

Dave:

My dad likes to say that when he decided to become a missionary before that,

Dave:

he thought he's gonna be an oil man, make a lot of money and give it away.

Dave:

I'll give you some, don't worry over 10%.

Dave:

And he opened the Bible to this, the verse seek ye first, the kingdom

Dave:

of God and his righteousness.

Dave:

And all of these things will be added for you.

Dave:

Turn to you.

Dave:

And he couldn't get his millions in there between that.

Dave:

And he said, God trusts lots of people with millions of

Dave:

dollars, but he didn't trust me.

Dave:

And so my mom and dad brought me over as a baby.

Dave:

I grew up in Thailand, had three sisters.

Dave:

I went to school here, boarding school.

Dave:

That's where I met Jesus.

Dave:

And then graduated from high school, went to Texas A& M university.

Dave:

And then commissioned as an officer in the U.

Dave:

S.

Dave:

Army, first with the infantry in Panama, and then later the

Dave:

Rangers and Special Forces.

Dave:

And then after that, went to seminary and came out to Burma.

Simon:

Right.

Simon:

So that's a real sort of snapshot of a whole lot of stuff.

Simon:

So you came to faith young, but was Jesus, were you on track all the way?

Dave:

No.

Dave:

I remember when I was in seven years old in boarding school,

Dave:

I gave my life to the Lord.

Dave:

But what led up to that was I was separated from my

Dave:

parents in a boarding school.

Dave:

I missed them only saw him a couple of times a year.

Dave:

So I was homesick and then I got dingy fever and I became physically sick at the

Dave:

same time and I couldn't even drink water.

Dave:

I just throw it up.

Dave:

I just lay in there in my bed and I thought, Jesus, are you real?

Dave:

Because I know you are for my mom and dad.

Dave:

There's no mom and dad here right now.

Dave:

And I prayed, Jesus, if you're real, help me.

Dave:

And I felt like the room got lighter.

Dave:

And I had this feeling, God is love.

Dave:

So how do you describe the feeling of love?

Dave:

When you meet God, there's love.

Dave:

And that's what I felt.

Dave:

And Simon, this part of the story I rarely tell because some people might not like

Dave:

it or, I don't know, but I just feel I should share this part of the story.

Dave:

All right.

Dave:

When I looked in the corner of the room, like, expecting to see Jesus, I didn't.

Dave:

But the room was lighter.

Dave:

Ooh, okay, he's real.

Dave:

I'm gonna follow him.

Dave:

Then I closed my eyes, and you know what I saw?

Dave:

I saw Mary, the mother of Jesus, for real.

Dave:

Now, I'm a Protestant kid.

Dave:

I grew up in Thailand.

Dave:

As kids of Protestants, I didn't know any Catholics.

Dave:

And I'd never even heard of Mary, except for she gave birth to Jesus.

Dave:

And had other kids after that.

Dave:

And was, a special woman, of course.

Dave:

But I had no background to even think about Mary.

Dave:

And I never told that story because it just never came to my mind.

Dave:

And one day, this is about 10 years ago, I was at a Presbyterian

Dave:

church in America sharing.

Dave:

And they asked me at the end of the Q& A, you're how did

Dave:

you become a follower of Jesus?

Dave:

And I told them.

Dave:

And then it just struck me.

Dave:

Don't be afraid.

Dave:

Tell them about seeing Mary.

Dave:

And I was like, oh, great.

Dave:

They'll never invite me back here again.

Dave:

So I told that story.

Dave:

And the moderator of all the Presbyteries in that Sacramento,

Dave:

California area wrote a little note.

Dave:

She's a lady.

Dave:

She gave it to me.

Dave:

And I opened it.

Dave:

This is what I read.

Dave:

You could not have your mother with you.

Dave:

So Jesus sent his mother to comfort you.

Dave:

David/Simon: Awesome.

Dave:

Wow.

Dave:

It reminded me, I don't know much.

Dave:

I don't know.

Dave:

I know enough to know what I'm sinning.

Dave:

I know what I need to do, but I can't tell other people what

Dave:

they've seen or haven't seen.

Dave:

Jesus said, by their fruits you shall know them.

Dave:

So people have all kinds of experiences that to me, I just go, okay, you had it.

Dave:

What are you going to do with it?

Dave:

If it's really from God, it's going to have fruit from God.

Dave:

I don't need to debate it.

Dave:

So I share that part because that was an unexpected thing that happened to me.

Dave:

And I never thought about it again until that church in California 10 years ago.

Dave:

So I was like 40 something years into my life before I thought of it.

Dave:

And I just wanted to share that with y'all and to anybody who listens is God

Dave:

is mysterious and he has his own ways that each of us to meet each of our

Dave:

needs because he cares for each person.

Dave:

He actually cares for us.

Dave:

I was thinking of sins I've done and ask God to forgive this and go out.

Dave:

You really forgave me and you keep blessing me.

Dave:

What kind of God is this, who sent his own son, Jesus, to be mocked, to be

Dave:

killed, to say, forgive us of our sins?

Dave:

Father, forgive them.

Dave:

They don't know what you're doing.

Dave:

They don't know what they're doing to rise again, appearing to the

Dave:

ladies, and then men left for that, and he's the one that stills with us.

Dave:

And so that's the main now purpose of my life, I hope, although I

Dave:

subterfuge you with all kinds of selfish purposes in between.

Dave:

is to serve Jesus and to be, to serve people second.

Dave:

And so anyways, when I was seven years old, I became a follower of Jesus.

Dave:

And then after that, I became a proper Pharisee.

Dave:

I didn't drink, I didn't smoke.

Dave:

I didn't take any drugs.

Dave:

I played all the sports, but I became a very proud, arrogant

Dave:

person who followed rules of a kind.

Dave:

Right.

Dave:

And I remember thinking, I never surrendered.

Dave:

I boxed.

Dave:

I wrestled.

Dave:

I wrestled in university.

Dave:

I played rugby and I fight anybody.

Dave:

And I, there wasn't a mountain that I couldn't climb.

Dave:

I was climbed in the Himalaya in, I haven't climbed Everest, but I've climbed

Dave:

Mira and I climbed Mount McKinley in Alaska in the Matterhorn and other

Dave:

mountains that I had the time to do.

Dave:

And I'm going to make it.

Dave:

If I don't make it this time, I'll make it next time.

Dave:

I'll never quit.

Dave:

And I prided myself.

Dave:

What a sense of pride that I never surrender.

Dave:

But maybe we'll get to it later.

Dave:

Through a lot of failures in my life, I realized I've been

Dave:

surrendering all the time.

Dave:

My whole life I've been surrendering, not to the things that people could

Dave:

see, but the things people couldn't see.

Dave:

And I was actually quite a weakling.

Dave:

And I remember once there was a movie called The Edge.

Dave:

And it's a movie about a rich guy who gets, whose plane crashes and he's in

Dave:

the middle of the Alaskan wilderness and he's trying to survive and his

Dave:

own friends try to kill him and he's attacked by a bear and all of these

Dave:

terrible things happen and he makes it.

Dave:

And a journalist at the end says, that's the hardest test you've had in your life.

Dave:

And he said, we're all tested, but not in the ways we want to be.

Dave:

And I realized for me, the things I called tests, climbing mountains,

Dave:

wrestling, boxing, being in special forces, fighting, those weren't tests.

Dave:

Those were validations of what I like to do anyway.

Dave:

Those are validations of what I was good at.

Dave:

I'm actually not much good at anything, but I can try.

Dave:

They're validations of those things.

Dave:

The real test of my life.

Dave:

Greed, pride, lust, fear.

Dave:

I often fail.

Dave:

Maybe I mostly fail unless God helps me and my friends help me.

Dave:

Or I get caught.

Dave:

And I thought, yeah man, you're gonna surrender to something.

Dave:

And so to me, I realized I've been surrendering to the

Dave:

wrong things my whole life.

Dave:

I'm gonna surrender to Jesus.

Dave:

I hated that word, Simon.

Dave:

I hated the word surrender.

Dave:

I didn't understand what it really meant.

Dave:

And now I try to surrender every day, every morning to Jesus.

Dave:

Every morning I say the Lord's prayer.

Dave:

I say the 23rd Psalm.

Dave:

I say, God, what do you want me to do today?

Dave:

And so it's been a growing process and I don't think I'm better than I was.

Dave:

I think sometimes I'm more aware than I was, but I'm grateful

Dave:

that God uses me anyway.

Dave:

, Simon: Any moments you want to share from special forces days?

Dave:

God's hand on that equipping you for what you're doing now?

Dave:

I remember very early on parachuting with the Rangers.

Dave:

And we had six people injured right away.

Dave:

I was the last one and I was the only one not knocked out or badly injured.

Dave:

And I'm getting on my knees and getting my weapon and getting my gear out.

Dave:

I heard this voice clear as day.

Dave:

It is not your time.

Dave:

Wow.

Dave:

What does that mean?

Dave:

And I remembered also, We must not confuse wisdom born of

Dave:

love with wisdom born of pain.

Dave:

What I mean by this is I remember once in, in a really difficult

Dave:

selection process and part of it, I was setting up an ambush.

Dave:

This is training and the ambush machine guns are set up.

Dave:

Claymore mines are set up.

Dave:

We're going to wipe out the enemy, this is training, but it's evaluated, but I

Dave:

haven't eaten in, Two days, three days.

Dave:

I haven't slept in two days and I've been moving hard.

Dave:

And so it's torture.

Dave:

And this is in the middle of a three months.

Dave:

It's just, you're just miserable.

Dave:

You got sores all over your body.

Dave:

You haven't can't sleep.

Dave:

They're pressuring you.

Dave:

This is part of Ranger school.

Dave:

And I remember coming up with this idea, boy, this ambush is so evil.

Dave:

Why are we practicing killing people?

Dave:

And later on, I thought, really, Dave, do you suddenly became empathetic

Dave:

or was just pain talking to you?

Dave:

You were suffering so much.

Dave:

You suddenly became this wise, holy person.

Dave:

That wasn't love talking.

Dave:

That was your own pain.

Dave:

And I noticed that climbing big mountains, people quit halfway up.

Dave:

Suddenly they become very wise.

Dave:

It's not worth this.

Dave:

It's not a matter of pride.

Dave:

We should turn back.

Dave:

They didn't say that in the parking lot.

Dave:

We're going to go do it, man.

Dave:

And so wisdom comes from love, doesn't come from anywhere else.

Dave:

And so when you, let's say, don't fight someone because of love, that's wisdom.

Dave:

If you do it because of fear or pain, no, that's just selfishness.

Dave:

It's just a camouflage form.

Dave:

And so this experience in the military gave me disciplines.

Dave:

Help me pursue excellence, help me be careful with attention to detail

Dave:

and planning and thinking ahead and always thinking what could happen,

Dave:

what are the things that go wrong, so you can mitigate those risks.

Dave:

You never want to be led by comfort, by fear or by pride, but you also

Dave:

want a way to survive the mission.

Dave:

So it's never, we never say I was in the military or in the freedom Rangers.

Dave:

We never say, Oh, it's too dangerous.

Dave:

We can't do it.

Dave:

It's too hard.

Dave:

We can't.

Dave:

O, no.

Dave:

It's does God want us to do it?

Dave:

Now we're scared.

Dave:

Now we're tired.

Dave:

Let's just be honest.

Dave:

We are God.

Dave:

We're scared and we're tired.

Dave:

Maybe we're being foolish.

Dave:

Maybe you don't want us to do this.

Dave:

Maybe those are warning signals.

Dave:

We give it back to you.

Dave:

Do you want us to do it?

Dave:

If you get that peace back in your heart, it says, yes, you're scared.

Dave:

You're tired.

Dave:

You have bad motives.

Dave:

You want to be a hero.

Dave:

You want people to love you.

Dave:

Okay.

Dave:

There's a kind of mixed up, but what's deep down in there.

Dave:

You're doing this because of love.

Dave:

You're doing this because I love these people and I sent you and you check

Dave:

that and you go, okay, now, Lord, help me survive it and use my brain, my

Dave:

wit, my spit, my tackle to find the safest way to get to that objective.

Dave:

And I helps me to think, what if that's my daughter right there?

Dave:

There's a scene in the documentary movie, freedom Rangers, where

Dave:

we go to rescue this girl.

Dave:

She's hiding in her dead mother for three days.

Dave:

ISIS is shooting down that street.

Dave:

They've already taken out a tank, they have anti tank systems, they have RPGs,

Dave:

they have mortars, they have machine guns, rifles, snipers, the whole thing.

Dave:

And I remember looking at that little girl and thinking, if I was a dad

Dave:

somewhere else and I knew my little girl was about to get killed and

Dave:

it was a stranger that could try to save her, but in doing so would

Dave:

probably get killed, what would I say?

Dave:

I would say, please try.

Dave:

I would say, Oh no, protect yourself.

Dave:

I would say, please try save my daughter.

Dave:

And so many times when I'm under fire, when I have to get up and go

Dave:

help someone who's getting shot at or already shot, I don't want to do it.

Dave:

I don't even know who they are.

Dave:

I don't even know why they got there.

Dave:

I got a wife and kids.

Dave:

I don't want to die here.

Dave:

And then I pray and go, God, you want me to go?

Dave:

And then if it's that kind of peace, like, yeah, they need help.

Dave:

And I go, okay, that could be my kid.

Dave:

I would think very, I would not hesitate.

Dave:

That's my kid.

Dave:

So why am I hesitating?

Dave:

That's God's kid.

Dave:

So Lord Jesus, you want me to go help me go.

Dave:

And the military gave me experiences in leadership, in followership,

Dave:

in practical ways to get things done, especially in war zones.

Dave:

That prepared me for this work in Burma, in the Middle East, and

Dave:

on the places we've been called.

Simon:

Yeah.

Simon:

Listen, go on, let's go for it.

Simon:

Tell us about the Free Burma Rangers and the journey to that.

Dave:

I'd left the Special Forces, I was in Fuller Theological Seminary, and

Dave:

I had met a girl, her name is Karen, I'm married to her right now, 31 years.

Dave:

and I liked her.

Dave:

She pretended not to like me.

Dave:

I don't like you, but I'll go climbing with you.

Dave:

We're not dating, but yeah, I guess I need to hold your hand now.

Dave:

And she'd never kissed the guy and she kissed me.

Dave:

And but no, that didn't really mean anything.

Dave:

I knew it meant something.

Dave:

And she was the most godly, wonderful woman I'd ever met.

Dave:

And when I first saw her in church in Washington state USA, She was

Dave:

like a flower coming down the aisle.

Dave:

And I thought she exuded life, love, purity, peace, and joy.

Dave:

And she was beautiful.

Dave:

I thought, Oh God, I want to marry a girl like that.

Dave:

Anyways, it was God's mercy that we could get together.

Dave:

We're only, we're not dating.

Dave:

We're just climbing mountains, big mountains, double ice axes, crampons,

Dave:

ropes, the whole thing, not hikes.

Dave:

And I'm, and she's doing it and she'd never done it before.

Dave:

And I said, Oh God, let me marry you.

Dave:

In the middle of that, the Wa tribe of Burma's now 74 years of civil war.

Dave:

The Wa are one of the tribes in Burma.

Dave:

One of their leaders was Christian.

Dave:

Now, most of the Wa are not Christian.

Dave:

Some tribes in Burma like the Karen or Kareni and Chin, they're mostly

Dave:

Christian, but the Wa are only 2%.

Dave:

But the leader, the foreign minister was a Christian and he trekked from Burma,

Dave:

Wa state Burma, which is Northern Burma.

Dave:

through central Burma into Thailand, which is next door to Burma.

Dave:

Burma is also called Myanmar and met my parents who are missionaries.

Dave:

Everybody knows them.

Dave:

And saw a picture of me with a green beret at special forces in

Dave:

America and knows what that is and says, is that guy following Jesus?

Dave:

And my dad said, yeah, he just left the army.

Dave:

He's in seminary.

Dave:

We'll send him to Was state because he is a warrior and we are

Dave:

warrior people, but we need Jesus.

Dave:

And my dad calls me on the phone.

Dave:

I was actually sitting across from Karen.

Dave:

I was visiting her in between seminary and asked her to marry me three times.

Dave:

She said no every time.

Dave:

And I get this phone call.

Dave:

This is before cell phones.

Dave:

So it's a landline.

Dave:

I don't know how my dad found that number.

Dave:

And my dad up to this time in my life had called me on the

Dave:

phone five times in my life.

Dave:

Number one, we had no phones in Thailand when I grew up.

Dave:

We didn't exist.

Dave:

And then I was in America and I was in the army and special

Dave:

forces all over the place.

Dave:

There were no cell phones and we're just not that kind of family.

Dave:

We want to meet each other and hug each other and talk.

Dave:

So he called me, that's serious.

Dave:

And I'm very close to my dad.

Dave:

And he said, Dave, I think it's the Holy spirit, but it's, you

Dave:

got to answer the question.

Dave:

Are you going to come or not?

Dave:

I don't know.

Dave:

And I prayed and I just felt peace.

Dave:

I'm coming.

Dave:

Click, turn the camera and go, I wish you would marry me.

Dave:

I'd love for you to marry me, but I understand you don't want to.

Dave:

I'm out of here.

Dave:

I thought that's it.

Dave:

I'll never see her again.

Dave:

The long story short within that week, we were engaged.

Dave:

Then we were married and then we went in 1993.

Dave:

This is all in 1993.

Dave:

into Burma, into Was state where our ministry started.

Dave:

And in the middle of all that war and fighting, we saw people need help.

Dave:

And even though I don't have much, I can do help one person and

Dave:

they'll be glad and I'll be glad.

Dave:

And that's the beginning.

Dave:

So the Freeborn Rangers name didn't come until 1997.

Dave:

Hey, we should have a name, but we started actually in 1993.

Dave:

And our main mission is share the gospel of Jesus, give help, hope,

Dave:

and love, and get the news out.

Dave:

And most of that help is medical supplies, tarps for people when they've chased out

Dave:

of their villages, hiding in the jungle in the rainy season, they need plastic.

Dave:

If it's winter, they need blankets, clothes, medicine.

Dave:

Encouragement.

Dave:

My wife started something called good life club program, which it

Dave:

says Jesus came to give the words.

Dave:

He said from John 10, 10, I come to give a life and life abundantly.

Dave:

So she called it the good life club.

Dave:

And she was at a crisis herself when she said, how, what do I do Lord?

Dave:

About these people in war, these kids, I can barely take care of my kids.

Dave:

We have three kids and they all grew up in the jungles.

Dave:

I can barely take care of my kids.

Dave:

What am I gonna do about these kids?

Dave:

They're getting shot at and shell.

Dave:

I can't stop that.

Dave:

I, how I take care of all of them.

Dave:

There's thousands of them.

Dave:

And she felt Jesus say to her, you can't take care of them, bring them

Dave:

to me, introduce them to Jesus, and then he'll take care of them.

Dave:

So that's what the Good Life Club started as.

Dave:

She's talked to Jesus.

Dave:

He'll help you.

Dave:

I'm here in physical form.

Dave:

I'll do all I can, but I'm a little person.

Dave:

Jesus loves you.

Dave:

And so we started the Good Life Club.

Dave:

We now have, we've trained thousands of people.

Dave:

But most, work for two, three years and go back to their normal jobs that

Dave:

in the resistance, Burma, again, I said, 74 years of fighting now between

Dave:

the ethnic groups and the dictators.

Dave:

Now the Burmans, who the majority of Burma have joined the ethnic

Dave:

groups, it's a bigger fight.

Dave:

They are pro democracy forces of Burmans and ethnics are slowly

Dave:

winning, although it's very bloody.

Dave:

I don't know if you get our reports, but I've lost two people this last

Dave:

week, one day before yesterday, killed.

Dave:

One of my best guys, I was just with him, and another one of my best

Dave:

guys just stepped on a landmine.

Dave:

This is very bloody, but our main job is help people physically, share the gospel

Dave:

of Jesus, that's spiritual, emotional, relational, and then get the news out.

Dave:

So I appreciate Simon just being able to be on this show and tell

Dave:

people mostly about, remind them.

Dave:

About the love of God, the mercy of God, the power of Jesus over all our sins, over

Dave:

Satan, over demons, over everything evil.

Dave:

He has a way for us.

Dave:

And in the end, he takes us to heaven.

Dave:

That's our main effort, but around that is the physical things that

Dave:

humans need that we're involved in trying to provide in Burma.

Dave:

We've got now about 150 teams from 16 ethnic groups in Burma in every

Dave:

fighting area, except maybe one or two.

Dave:

And then we also have teams in Iraq and Syria.

Dave:

We have a partnership in Tajikistan helping Afghans, and we have a rotation

Dave:

of chaplains and medics into Ukraine.

Simon:

Anted to interview you 'cause even when you mentioned 1993, that's

Simon:

the date of our genocide in Burundi.

Simon:

So my 25 years in Burundi I call it the last eight years of

Simon:

our sort of civil war and yeah.

Simon:

Lived expecting die.

Simon:

I've seen the unbelievable documentary and it brought me to

Simon:

tears watching the stuff, the lives you saved, on the coalface there.

Simon:

I suppose I, I lived expecting to die in a slightly less intense way, but full on.

Simon:

And it just so sharpens you in terms of what matters, doesn't it?

Simon:

And I got so many questions like, cause people thought we were nuts

Simon:

having our kids in a war zone and the risk there, choosing faith over fear,

Simon:

there's something speaking to all that.

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

I'm afraid a lot.

Dave:

And the antidote to fear is faith.

Dave:

Just recently.

Dave:

A girl from Ukraine who had married one of our volunteers came from Ukraine

Dave:

to Thailand, wanted to go to Burma with us and said, can I go to Burma?

Dave:

I said, why do you want to go to Burma?

Dave:

Number one, I want to apologize to people of Burma.

Dave:

We Ukrainians had no idea.

Dave:

We didn't pay attention to their suffering.

Dave:

They've been suffering for 70 plus years.

Dave:

We just started now.

Dave:

We know Number two, I'm gonna remind them that God is the most powerful force

Dave:

they can depend on him I said, okay, she came into Burma and she's talking

Dave:

to all these displaced Karen people.

Dave:

That's one of the tribes in Burma in the jungle.

Dave:

And she's standing with the Ukrainian flag.

Dave:

We have all these little flags.

Dave:

And she said, don't feed your fear, feed your faith.

Dave:

And that's true for all of us, whether we're in a war zone, like, like, like

Dave:

you've been in, in Burundi or other places where the fears are right in your face.

Dave:

But you don't have to be in a war zone to be afraid.

Dave:

Am I gonna fail the test?

Dave:

Am I gonna get fired?

Dave:

Will this happen?

Dave:

Will that happen?

Dave:

I'm sick.

Dave:

Is it cancer?

Dave:

Or my daughter's going to university.

Dave:

Is she gonna be safe?

Dave:

There's so many fears that affect all of us.

Dave:

And that's, for me, and for I think all of us, that's our decision we have to make.

Dave:

Which one are we gonna feed?

Dave:

And when we feed fear, everything is worse.

Dave:

And then, usually it doesn't even happen anyways, but we're

Dave:

miserable the whole time, even when something terrible doesn't happen.

Dave:

And then when it does happen, we almost give in to it.

Dave:

But when you choose faith, you enjoy every moment.

Dave:

And when something bad happens, you're ready.

Dave:

You're on balance.

Dave:

You're not off balance expecting something bad.

Dave:

You're open because you're acting in faith and faithful equal love

Dave:

and perfect love casts out fear.

Dave:

So when I'm scared, I just say, Jesus, help me.

Dave:

Give me love for that person.

Dave:

Give me the strength to do this.

Dave:

And I go in Jesus name and Jesus way.

Dave:

One story.

Dave:

So Julia standing there she's crying.

Dave:

She said, my brother was killed in Mariopole.

Dave:

He's already dead.

Dave:

And they can relate to that.

Dave:

The Crenn and Burma go, yeah, my brother's dead.

Dave:

My uncle's dead.

Dave:

My dad's dead.

Dave:

My father's dead.

Dave:

Out of communication in the front line, he's 60 years old fighting.

Dave:

My mom and I cry ourselves to sleep every night praying.

Dave:

We know what it's like, but Jesus is bigger than all of this.

Dave:

Feed your faith, not your fear.

Dave:

And so that's what I have to remind myself because we, all of us have

Dave:

those temptations to feed our fear or feed our faith, but faith works well.

Dave:

Fear is horrible.

Dave:

It's destructive and it ruins us.

Dave:

But the good thing about Jesus is even when you choose fear, even

Dave:

when you choose sin, the moment you stop and say, I give it up.

Dave:

God gets you starting again.

Dave:

So if anybody watches our documentary, free room arrangers you'll notice in

Dave:

part of the documentary, there's a, an attempt to rescue a little girl.

Dave:

And this was towards the end of the battle of Mosul when ISIS had been

Dave:

pushed to the West side of Mosul.

Dave:

And we were with the Iraqi army providing the name of Jesus gospel help.

Dave:

And in, in the context, the Iraqi general I worked with, A Muslim,

Dave:

General Mustafa, said, I prayed to God to send help to us when we were losing

Dave:

our country to ISIS starting in 2014.

Dave:

And what did God send?

Dave:

The two worst things, an American Christian.

Dave:

And at the end of the battle, he said, Thank you for showing us

Dave:

what it means to follow Jesus.

Dave:

Anyway, so I was with General Mustafa with the Iraqi army taking care of displaced

Dave:

people as they fled Isis Some of them were Isis and then treating Iraqi wounded.

Dave:

I myself was wounded four times I've face to face with Isis multiple times

Dave:

shooting at me and back and forth and these things were our experience a lot

Dave:

of death a lot of destruction and By the end of the battle Simon, I had a

Dave:

core like I felt like I had a cone or a core A cylinder of sorrow right here in

Dave:

my body, I remembered my first day of seminary when my professor Chuck Kraft

Dave:

said You can live well with sorrow.

Dave:

You can't live well with shame.Jesus wept.

Dave:

Sorrow is all about love, so it hurts a lot, but we can live well with it.

Dave:

We can still love other people and cry for someone else.

Dave:

Shame, we can't live with.

Dave:

It destroys us, and Jesus will take that away.

Dave:

So anyways, we're in the Battle of Mosul, with a lot of sorrow, but a lot of love

Dave:

too, and feeling useful helping the Iraqi soldiers and helping people fleeing.

Dave:

And one particular afternoon, there was a lot of fighting.

Dave:

We got to turn around this block.

Dave:

I tried to put my head out in the street, machine guns, rockets going by.

Dave:

And you can't even look out there.

Dave:

And someone crawls up, shot up and we helped them.

Dave:

And a guy comes running.

Dave:

He's not shot any kids.

Dave:

They're killing the kids.

Dave:

They killed all my kids.

Dave:

They killed them.

Dave:

The kids, he's crying and crying.

Dave:

Back down there.

Dave:

Can someone save?

Dave:

Maybe some are left.

Dave:

By now it's dark.

Dave:

We try to go down there.

Dave:

More shooting, more wounded.

Dave:

We're just taking care of the wounded.

Dave:

The next morning, it's just starting to get light.

Dave:

I look out and I just see bundles of rags and things.

Dave:

And think that's a pretty messy street.

Dave:

There's a lot of debris and rubble.

Dave:

And I look.

Dave:

Those aren't bundles of rags.

Dave:

Those are people.

Dave:

They're dead.

Dave:

And then I looked probably only 10 meters from me as a little baby in

Dave:

swaddling clothes with a bullet right in her forehead and then right behind

Dave:

her where she'd evidently fallen was her mother, a bullet in the back of her head.

Dave:

So the sniper had gone, boom, the baby, boom, the mom.

Dave:

Then I looked and go, oh, that's not a broken piece of

Dave:

machinery, that's a wheelchair.

Dave:

Someone slumped over shot and the caregiver had been pushing it shot.

Dave:

And then I looked, there's another wheelchair and a guy and a woman flipped

Dave:

upside down, shot and the man shot.

Dave:

And then I looked, I started counting bodies.

Dave:

There's over 150 people shot in the street.

Dave:

And ISIS was still at this big hospital shooting.

Dave:

Then I looked and there were kids.

Dave:

Still alive, crawling around trying to get water.

Dave:

I remember this what looked to be like a two year old kid with no pants on,

Dave:

just a shirt stumbling around looking for water, touching, trying to wake the

Dave:

dead bodies that probably of his parents.

Dave:

He's dead.

Dave:

What are we going to do?

Dave:

Can't even get an armored vehicle.

Dave:

The first armored vehicle went on and got blown up on fire.

Dave:

Oh man.

Dave:

They're posing the street down machine guns, rockets.

Dave:

They had a ZSU 23 on an elevator in the hospital as an anti aircraft

Dave:

weapon, which also destroyed tanks.

Dave:

You can't move on that street.

Dave:

So I prayed and prayed, how are we going to save these kids?

Dave:

And I had a plan to, and I'm talking to the Americans.

Dave:

I'm ex special forces.

Dave:

I had some American military friends.

Dave:

The real key though, isn't my connections.

Dave:

The real key is the commanding general.

Dave:

That operation was general Scott Eflont and he was a follower of Jesus.

Dave:

The one to form the same Robertson, both these guys.

Dave:

And they said, the most important thing is God, then our country,

Dave:

then our military, then ourselves.

Dave:

And so when I talked to him, he called me the, he called me the two meter

Dave:

drone, cause I was always reporting.

Dave:

What was happening?

Dave:

So I said, Hey, can you give me smoke?

Dave:

If you give me enough smoke to obscure the hospital where they're shooting at

Dave:

us, I can maybe get this kid by now.

Dave:

Simon, there's only one kid left alive.

Dave:

One kid left alive.

Dave:

That's it.

Dave:

They're all dead.

Dave:

And joining all the other dead bodies in Sweden.

Dave:

The kid left alive is hiding under her mother.

Dave:

The reason she's alive is her mother's been dead for three days and she's hiding

Dave:

underneath her and she doesn't move.

Dave:

And so to the enemy, they can't really see her.

Dave:

You see this body and.

Dave:

I asked the Iraqi general, not General Mustafa, a different general.

Dave:

I said, please give me one tank to go first and blast at ISIS, one armored

Dave:

bulldozer to clear the big rubble out.

Dave:

This is massive amounts of rubble.

Dave:

And then three armored Humvees.

Dave:

I had one armored Humvee myself, I used for medical.

Dave:

Three of theirs and mine in column behind the tank and the armored bulldozer

Dave:

will drive right up to where the wall is, where this remaining kit is.

Dave:

Get her in the vehicle and get out.

Dave:

It's the only way there's so much fire coming down.

Dave:

And they, he said, no way.

Dave:

I was like, wow.

Dave:

Finally, I just went back and prayed.

Dave:

My daughter was with me.

Dave:

She was driving an armored ambulance.

Dave:

She's 16 years old, driving armored ambulance.

Dave:

The reason she was driving because some of the men couldn't drive

Dave:

stick, but she could drive six shift and okay, honey, you're it.

Dave:

And she's very calm and cool.

Dave:

She's now in nursing school.

Dave:

But anyway, and it's funny when she says, Dad, here in nursing school,

Dave:

they talk about us being at the front line of this, the front line of that.

Dave:

They have no idea what a front line is.

Dave:

But anyways, she she's a follower of Jesus, which is the most important thing.

Dave:

So she's driving the ambulance and she's not going to go out on the rescue.

Dave:

I'm trying to figure out this rescue.

Dave:

And finally she just prays for me.

Dave:

And one of my chaplains from Thailand, back still in Thailand,

Dave:

Paul Bradley, he prays for me.

Dave:

And I just felt the Holy Spirit come over me with confidence.

Dave:

Confidence in what?

Dave:

Nothing had changed.

Dave:

I felt God's presence.

Dave:

Okay, we're going to do it.

Dave:

I don't know how.

Dave:

So I go to the general again and he's gone and I get the second in command.

Dave:

He's a colonel.

Dave:

I said, will you come with me?

Dave:

He goes, yeah.

Dave:

I've taken him to that building on the edge of the street.

Dave:

We stick our heads out the window, boom, man.

Dave:

Oh, he almost gets killed.

Dave:

ISIS is here.

Dave:

I said yeah.

Dave:

Give me this bulldozer and a tank and humvees.

Dave:

He goes, no way.

Dave:

That's all.

Dave:

We only have two tanks left.

Dave:

I'm really sorry about the kids, but there's a, the war has got to

Dave:

go on and we have many more kids.

Dave:

And I said, if God told you, if Allah told you to do it, would you do it?

Dave:

And he goes of course I said, let's pray right now.

Dave:

And using in my mind that there's two ways you can define Allah.

Dave:

You can define Allah as the Arabic word for God.

Dave:

Or you can define Allah as the God of Islam, which is

Dave:

different than the God of Jesus.

Dave:

Depends how you define it.

Dave:

But I was choosing at that moment to talk to the living God I know about, but

Dave:

using the name that they call Him, Allah.

Dave:

And I said, I grabbed this colonel's hand and I said, Dear Allah,

Dave:

tell this colonel what to do.

Dave:

In Jesus name, in Messiah's name, in Esau's name, in Yeshua's name.

Dave:

Every name I knew for Jesus, they would understand.

Dave:

That's what I prayed in His name.

Dave:

And he opened his eyes and looked at me, and I said, What did God tell

Dave:

you, and he said one tank, that's it.

Dave:

Take it or leave it.

Dave:

I'll take it.

Dave:

Hey, whoever wants to go come with me.

Dave:

We said the Lord's prayer.

Dave:

We don't have a armored bulldozer.

Dave:

We don't have humvees.

Dave:

We're going to run behind this tank, which works in a movie, but not in real life.

Dave:

And now you're completely exposed to the sides and over the top to enemy fire.

Dave:

And it's terrifying.

Dave:

It felt like if you've ever been a rollercoaster.

Dave:

And you get to the very top of the roller coaster.

Dave:

Imagine if you're in that little cart at the very high point before you

Dave:

plunge down, you automatically ejected yourself and just flew off like suicide.

Dave:

That's what it felt like.

Dave:

Like, Oh my gosh.

Dave:

Terrifying.

Dave:

So there was five of us running behind the tank.

Dave:

Myself, one of our volunteers named sky, a new volunteer named

Dave:

Ephraim monkey, co founder of the free brim arrangers from Burma.

Dave:

And a guy named Mahmoud, Syrian refugee, who's a translator.

Dave:

We had no idea he was going on a rescue.

Dave:

It's very funny.

Dave:

Almost like Mr.

Dave:

Bean.

Dave:

Actually, we were all like Mr.

Dave:

Bean, except Mr.

Dave:

Bean with Jesus.

Dave:

And we run behind this tank.

Dave:

ICES is shooting at us.

Dave:

They're dropping mortars around us, firing RPGs.

Dave:

Machine guns bop.

Dave:

The tank is firing its main gun doo.

Dave:

And it's coaxial machine gun, k k.

Dave:

And we're just running.

Dave:

And the smoke starts to go away.

Dave:

The tank stops at the corner and the smoke's gone.

Dave:

I'm like, oh my gosh.

Dave:

Lord, I get, I have an iPhone, unsecure iPhone.

Dave:

This is not James Bond.

Dave:

I call up the American general.

Dave:

Can you give me more smoke?

Dave:

On it.

Dave:

They're dropping 155 howitzer smoke.

Dave:

White phosphorus, which is really thick white cloud in front of us.

Dave:

Obscure Isis is shooting, but they can't see us now.

Dave:

I run out, I get the girl to pull her off her mother cause she's

Dave:

clinging to her dead mother.

Dave:

And she's, I come out of the smoke and gunfire.

Dave:

She's probably like, what?

Dave:

I'm going to die.

Dave:

I fall down.

Dave:

I see this day.

Dave:

I don't know if there were so many bullets around me.

Dave:

I don't know if that I was on this rubble shot and I fell or I just

Dave:

tripped, I don't know, but I went down, but I never let go of her.

Dave:

And I just, she slammed into the rock, into the rubble right next to me.

Dave:

I said, sorry, girl, but it's not gonna let you go.

Dave:

I got up and got behind the tank and realize there's two men still alive.

Dave:

They're faking dead, pretending to be dead.

Dave:

Oh, we can't leave them.

Dave:

So we run back and get them.

Dave:

The tank's firing.

Dave:

We're dragging the two men.

Dave:

I'm carrying the girl and helping drag one man.

Dave:

One of my guys gets shot through the calf Ephraim.

Dave:

And he drops one of them in, that guy gets killed, we are able to rescue the girl,

Dave:

Damoa, that's her name we find out, it means tear, I'm holding onto her, she's

Dave:

five years old, got the blood of her mother stained into her clothes, and they,

Dave:

and pulling this other wounded guy out, and we get out, and RMV comes and picks

Dave:

us up under fire, we get everybody out, get the little girl out, get in RMV, my

Dave:

daughter's with me now, She's given water.

Dave:

This girl hasn't drank in three days.

Dave:

Just bought six bottles of water.

Dave:

She drank on the way to a clinic and then taking the other wounded guy.

Dave:

So before that happened, I remember that day before the rescue, I thought there's

Dave:

no way to do this and not get killed.

Dave:

But again, as I said earlier, if that was my daughter, I'd want someone to try.

Dave:

And then when I was behind the tank, getting ready to run out under the

Dave:

gunfire or into the gunfire, I was pretty sure I was going to be dead.

Dave:

I did not feel heroic or brave.

Dave:

I felt terrified, but I felt resolved and committed.

Dave:

And I thought this, if I die doing this, my wife and children will understand.

Dave:

It was for love, nothing else for love.

Dave:

It's okay.

Dave:

And when I had her in my arms and I got back to safety, I just

Dave:

said, God, thank you for this.

Dave:

Thank you for allowing me to be part of this.

Dave:

I was just one small part.

Dave:

There was my daughter who prayed my wife and my other daughter

Dave:

and son who were praying.

Dave:

My team that was in support, the chaplain from Thailand, praying the

Dave:

Iraqi tank, the American smoke, my other teammates, all of us together.

Dave:

We did this together, but without God, I don't think we could have done it.

Dave:

So we rescued this girl named Demoa.

Dave:

Her name is Tear.

Dave:

She's alive today.

Dave:

And I met her grandmother about seven months later and her aunt, the only

Dave:

people surviving in her family and her grandmother dropped down to kiss my

Dave:

feet when I met her and I picked her up.

Dave:

It's so embarrassing.

Dave:

She said, do not make me break my vow to God.

Dave:

She got really mad at me.

Dave:

I swore to God I would kiss the feet of the man who saved my granddaughter.

Dave:

And I was like, Oh, it's okay.

Dave:

Okay.

Dave:

And I hugged her and she's crying.

Dave:

And she said, I have a story to tell you on June the 2nd, I was in Baghdad.

Dave:

I knew my daughter was married to ISIS in Mosul.

Dave:

I didn't know what happened to him though.

Dave:

I've been out of touch for a few years.

Dave:

And I know I have grandkids, but I've hardly seen them.

Dave:

But on June the 2nd, which is the day of the rescue, the exact day of the

Dave:

rescue, June the 2nd, 2017, I'm in Mosul, in the middle of this rescue.

Dave:

The grandmother of Damoa is in Baghdad, and she sees a vision.

Dave:

In my vision, I saw my son in law and my daughter, We're dead.

Dave:

All the kids were dead, but the Mo was alive, and she's hiding under

Dave:

my dead daughter in this vision, and there were dead people everywhere.

Dave:

Rubble of the street.

Dave:

Isis is shooting, and there was like a line, like a small stream of evil

Dave:

to separate the living from the dead.

Dave:

And I looked at this vision with horror, realizing my daughter's dead.

Dave:

All my grandkids are dead.

Dave:

There's one alive.

Dave:

Who can save her?

Dave:

And a man shining in white with flashing eyes, golden hair, And a sword stepped

Dave:

across that stream of evil through the gunfire and rescued my daughter.

Dave:

She said, I saw that and I was going to tell you and I said, I don't know who

Dave:

that was, but I think it was Jesus and he sent us because that's what God does.

Dave:

He normally sends people to help other people by his power.

Dave:

Without his power, we couldn't have done it.

Dave:

We couldn't have done it, but you got to see what was behind our actions.

Dave:

The power of Jesus who cares about your granddaughter and cares about you.

Dave:

So to me, I have a few stories like that, that I've experienced, like where

Dave:

people saw things, these were Muslims.

Dave:

They saw things that God showed them, and they showed them the power of Jesus.

Dave:

One of my men, Muhammad, he appears in the video, in the movie.

Dave:

We baptize him later than Tigris, which is not in the video.

Dave:

When he was shot, you'll see this in the documentary if you watch

Dave:

it, he's dying in the hospital.

Dave:

He's shot actually eight times.

Dave:

But his sister in another part of Baghdad, and he's shot in Mosul, had a vision the

Dave:

same time he's taken to the hospital.

Dave:

And I saw my brother prepared for death, and the doctors gave up on him.

Dave:

And then I saw Jesus or someone who looked, she didn't say Jesus said

Dave:

a man shining in white, bright and beautiful, the most handsome man and

Dave:

full of power came up and picked up my brother Mohammed and said he's mine.

Dave:

At that same moment, they figured out later the doctor came in and

Dave:

said, Hey, that guy's still alive.

Dave:

Let's work on him.

Dave:

And Mohammed was saved.

Dave:

These are experiences of the power of Jesus that we've seen in Burma,

Dave:

in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, all over.

Dave:

And thanks for letting me share some of them.

Simon:

So in the film, and what people got to understand is that part of Dave's

Simon:

strategy is in filming all this, having people there who are totally risking their

Simon:

lives running behind the tank with him.

Simon:

It means that these, all these abuses are documented for the world to see.

Simon:

And so it's incredibly dangerous, incredibly powerful, but just

Simon:

tell us, Dave, about Shaheen and I just find that incredibly moving.

Dave:

Yes.

Dave:

I'm glad you said it's incredibly dangerous because it is.

Dave:

And just the other day when one of my team members was killed,

Dave:

my wife said, Dave, of course, this is deadly business wars, deadly business.

Dave:

And it is just brutal Simon.

Dave:

When I first got involved in it, some of it I liked.

Dave:

I like the action.

Dave:

I like running around.

Dave:

Boom, bang, boom, bang.

Dave:

But when you start getting your friends killed, when you see people killed

Dave:

around you, when you see the yeah.

Dave:

Absolute evil and mayhem and destruction of death even amongst your enemies.

Dave:

It's heartbreaking.

Dave:

It is dangerous And so it makes us ask we supposed to do this.

Dave:

We supposed to do this, but we document Like you said, because

Dave:

one, we want to show the victims.

Dave:

You're not alone.

Dave:

You're not alone.

Dave:

This really, we're going to tell the world what happened.

Dave:

This didn't happen in darkness.

Dave:

We're going to tell this story.

Dave:

We want to show the perpetrators.

Dave:

This is what you're doing.

Dave:

It's not good.

Dave:

We want to tell our supporters and friends, thanks for helping.

Dave:

This is what's going on.

Dave:

We want to tell people who don't know and may not care.

Dave:

This is what's happening as a witness.

Dave:

So we document every team.

Dave:

Our FBR Free Burma Ranger teams have a team leader, a medic,

Dave:

a good life club counselor, a videographer and photographer.

Dave:

We're always telling the story.

Dave:

And so when we were, before I met Shaheen, who is the Yazidi from Northern

Dave:

Kurdistan in Northern Iraq, before I met him, we were actually on a mission

Dave:

in Burma in 2014 and early 2015.

Dave:

And we had the Burma army all around us.

Dave:

And to get through them on that, we were walking for two months to

Dave:

get through them to go back because of the way they were configured.

Dave:

It would take me 19 more days is going 20 plus miles a day with full gear,

Dave:

avoiding them up and down mountains to get back to a border where I could.

Dave:

Get back to our base in Thailand about 19 days.

Dave:

If we won't move fast, I get an email on our little satellite system, which we

Dave:

open every day, a little backpack system.

Dave:

And it's from a friend of mine, Victor Marks, who has

Dave:

a ministry around the world.

Dave:

And Victor goes, Dave, your group doesn't have any rules.

Dave:

You know what's going on in Iraq with ISIS?

Dave:

They're killing people, especially Yazidis.

Dave:

They hate the Yazidis, which are their own little religion, kind of

Dave:

Zoroastrian religion, a mix between Zoroastrianism, Christianity,

Dave:

and Islam all mixed together.

Dave:

ISIS hates it.

Dave:

And they would kill Yazidi men and capture and rape them.

Dave:

Yeah, I said I heard about it.

Dave:

He said come and help.

Dave:

Be here in seven days, seven days.

Dave:

It will take me at least 19 walking hard to get to an international border.

Dave:

And then I got to do like five more days to get back to Thailand.

Dave:

And then I can come.

Dave:

That's a month.

Dave:

And, but we'll pray.

Dave:

And we prayed.

Dave:

If God opens the way we'll be there.

Dave:

Like Iraq, we're going to Iraq.

Dave:

We're going to Kurdistan.

Dave:

Where's that?

Dave:

And my ethnic team leaders were all with me and said if God opens

Dave:

the way, I think you should go.

Dave:

Just like that.

Dave:

Okay.

Dave:

The next morning, the Burma army was blocking our way.

Dave:

The short way out got lost and a way open, like a real miracle.

Dave:

Instead of 19 days, three days, hard walking almost 30 miles each day.

Dave:

We got to this border within seven days, my son and I were in Iraq.

Dave:

There's no way I can account for it.

Dave:

I said, God, so I'm telling that to the listeners, how do you go to these places?

Dave:

One, we're invited.

Dave:

Second, God does something we can't do.

Dave:

That's true of our, that's true of how we got to help the Yazidis.

Dave:

That's the story I'm telling, but it's also true how we got to Ukraine,

Dave:

how we got to all these places.

Dave:

We were invited, but God did something extra anyway.

Dave:

So we went to the Sinjar mountain, which were the main Yazidis live in

Dave:

the Northwestern corner of Kurdistan, Iraq, and we needed translators.

Dave:

And Victor had said, Hey, I met this guy.

Dave:

I'm Shaheen.

Dave:

He'll be really good for you.

Dave:

And I meet Shaheen.

Dave:

And he's the funniest guy, super profane.

Dave:

Using bad words all the time, but he uses them in a very funny way.

Dave:

He made us laugh all the time.

Dave:

And little glimpses of that in the documentary.

Dave:

But real wise guy, real sarcastic, respect for nobody, and he hated Arabs.

Dave:

Because ISIS are Arabs.

Dave:

And even before ISIS, they were oppressed by the Arabs.

Dave:

He hated them.

Dave:

And he complained about everybody, complained about America not doing

Dave:

enough to help, about England not doing enough, the West, everybody was cowards.

Dave:

And we're on top of Sinjar Mountain, where there's about 50, 000

Dave:

displaced people, and below is ISIS.

Dave:

And I'm going to go, I got my wife and kids on top of the mountain, ministering

Dave:

to the IDPs, living in tents with them.

Dave:

Doing kids programs, providing food and comfort and being with them.

Dave:

And I go down into the city where the fighting is against ISIS with my medics.

Dave:

To share the gospel of Jesus, to be there with these people to tell the

Dave:

story and provide medical assistance.

Dave:

And I need a translator.

Dave:

I said, come down with me.

Dave:

And he goes, no way, man, I'll get killed.

Dave:

My mother will kill me if I go down there and get killed.

Dave:

And I said you're not going to go with me.

Dave:

He goes, no, too dangerous.

Dave:

It's foolish.

Dave:

I said, I got mad.

Dave:

I said, you complain about Americans and you complain about

Dave:

everybody in the world, not helping.

Dave:

And you, Yazidi won't go down to help your people.

Dave:

That is cowardice.

Dave:

That is the worst thing I've ever heard.

Dave:

And he goes I'm a coward.

Dave:

I said that's a sin, man.

Dave:

Cowardice is a sin as much as every other kind of sin.

Dave:

Maybe it's the worst sin.

Dave:

It's the highest form of selfishness.

Dave:

There's no honor in it.

Dave:

There's no wisdom in it.

Dave:

It's not about being gentle.

Dave:

Cowardice is wicked sin.

Dave:

And I get really mad.

Dave:

He looks at me.

Dave:

I don't care.

Dave:

And I said you believe in God.

Dave:

Of course.

Dave:

Let's pray.

Dave:

And I calmed down.

Dave:

I said, Lord, guide Shaheen what to do.

Dave:

I don't know if he's supposed to go with me or not, but if he's

Dave:

supposed to stay out of love, then he should not go with me.

Dave:

But if he's staying out of fear and cowardice, then he needs to go.

Dave:

You show him the difference, please, in Jesus name.

Dave:

And I said, Shaheen, it's up to you.

Dave:

I can't tell you what God's going to tell you.

Dave:

Because if it's, you're staying because of love, you got things to do.

Dave:

Okay, then it's not cowardice.

Dave:

He goes, no, I'm scared.

Dave:

I said then you're coming with me or you can quit right now.

Dave:

I don't need you.

Dave:

And he goes, okay, I'm coming with you.

Dave:

But if I get killed, my mother will kill me.

Dave:

And we go down and he became always funny, always hilarious

Dave:

guy could mock, and mimic anybody.

Dave:

And we'd be in closer and closer.

Dave:

My whole family and all our team until May.

Dave:

This was back in 2000, beginning 2015, May the 4th.

Dave:

2017.

Dave:

Now we're in the western side of Mosul.

Dave:

He's with me in a Humvee.

Dave:

We're going to rescue families.

Dave:

We're picking up wounded and dead.

Dave:

We're going back for like our fifth trip.

Dave:

And on the way he goes, Dave, because we talk about Jesus all the time.

Dave:

Now he's been with us for a couple of years and he goes, I woke up this morning.

Dave:

I don't hate the Arabs anymore.

Dave:

God changed my heart.

Dave:

I don't hate the Arabs anymore.

Dave:

Wow.

Dave:

Sheen.

Dave:

That's awesome.

Dave:

He goes, yeah.

Dave:

And the last photo I took of him, there was a blown up vehicle and there

Dave:

were some survivors and he's shading Iraqi soldier and Arab, his enemy.

Dave:

With his body from the sun and helping stop the bleeding

Dave:

and then giving him water.

Dave:

I took this photo, not knowing that's the last photo.

Dave:

We take it up.

Dave:

Sheen.And then people came up to me, they're killing poor people in the street.

Dave:

They're killing families in the street.

Dave:

I said, let's go.

Dave:

And I jumped in my Humvee and with Muhammad, the guy I talked about

Dave:

earlier, Rocky soldier machines in the back, a guy named sky.

Dave:

When my medics is there, a guy named slowly from Burma.

Dave:

I'm medic for Burma's there.

Dave:

And then a guy named Kevin who is in special forces now as a pastor.

Dave:

He's actually up in the turret.

Dave:

Of the Humvee on the machine gun.

Dave:

He's like, okay, I got to help these family.

Dave:

And we go driving down and we get this family.

Dave:

I get out.

Dave:

The mom and kids are taking another Humvee.

Dave:

I get out and the dad is on the ground, rolling around, shot in the leg.

Dave:

Ah, and his daughter is standing next to him screaming.

Dave:

They shot my dad.

Dave:

My shove it up.

Dave:

She's just hysterical.

Dave:

I reached down to pick him up and she is shot through the head.

Dave:

She shot right behind her ear and outer eye and she falls on the ground.

Dave:

So I pick up the daughter.

Dave:

Stuffer in the Humvee, turn around, pick up the dad.

Dave:

As I pick him up, another bullet comes through his thigh, just

Dave:

misses my, my, my chest and arm,

Dave:

right through his body,

Dave:

misses me.

Dave:

I stuff him in the Humvee, I jump in the Humvee.

Dave:

The Humvee now has been hit over a hundred times.

Dave:

It won't move.

Dave:

We're stuck.

Dave:

And they're bringing more weapons to bear, and proceeding to destroy this Humvee.

Dave:

I'm calling for help, and then Muhammad goes, I'm gonna get help.

Dave:

And he jumps out of the driver's side, runs 70 meters over a hill to

Dave:

another Humvee, I get in the driver's side, try to make the vehicle move.

Dave:

I can't make it move.

Dave:

Eight bullets come through the hatch where Kevin is.

Dave:

Kevin's out of ammunition, crawls back down.

Dave:

He's been hit in the face, minor wound, but he can't do anything anymore.

Dave:

Closes the hatch.

Dave:

We're just praying.

Dave:

I'm on the radio.

Dave:

Give me a tank.

Dave:

Give me help.

Dave:

Give me.

Dave:

And in the back behind me is Skye and slowly the medics working on the father

Dave:

who's shot twice and the daughter who shot through the back of the head.

Dave:

They're still alive, outer eye.

Dave:

And they're trying to stop the bleeding, keep them alive.

Dave:

And the daughter in the back, because of her energy, she's throwing

Dave:

up and bleeding and unconscious and moaning and it's brutal.

Dave:

Muhammad comes back in another Humvee, pulls up next to us,

Dave:

opens the door, gets out.

Dave:

Shaheen steps out of the back so he can help slowly and Sky

Dave:

move these two casualties out.

Dave:

Shaheen is shot right through the stomach and he's on the ground.

Dave:

I just heard this, Oh, he's down.

Dave:

Muhammad grabs him.

Dave:

Muhammad shot

Dave:

eight times six times

Dave:

right away and two later.

Dave:

And he, but he didn't

Dave:

go down.

Dave:

He pulls Shaheen into his Humvee and they take off.

Dave:

And what I found out later is they both get evacuated.

Dave:

Muhammad survives, but he's going to die about nine days later.

Dave:

And meanwhile, I'm still in that Humvee.

Dave:

Finally, an armored personnel carrier comes up next to us in a

Dave:

tank and just blasted the enemy.

Dave:

One of my friends who's an atheist named Justin.

Dave:

Cause anybody can join us.

Dave:

You don't have to be a Christian and join us.

Dave:

You have to do it for love.

Dave:

We don't pay these people.

Dave:

And he's the ex Marine American Marine

Dave:

atheist.

Dave:

And he risked

Dave:

his life to save me.

Dave:

Drove another Humvee, chained us up and pulled us out.

Dave:

We evacuated that man and his daughter.

Dave:

And they're both alive to this day.

Dave:

Her name is Aisha and she survived.

Dave:

She's got a artificial eye, but she's beautiful.

Dave:

Young girl healed and Shaheen died.

Dave:

So when Shaheen died, that was the loss of a brother for me, but I

Dave:

believe he's in heaven with Jesus and that his heart changed that very day.

Dave:

that

Simon:

he

Dave:

was helping save the people he hated.

Simon:

And it was so powerful in the film where you go

Simon:

back late, seven months

Simon:

later, I think it was, and you show the photo of him to the people that

Simon:

he saved and you open up on that spot.

Simon:

Is that right?

Simon:

You open up a sort of children's playground in his honor.

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

So when the battle of Mosul is over, we go back and we're

Dave:

trying to find a lot of people we throughout the course of this battle.

Dave:

And we, by God's help, we find everybody.

Dave:

And we also go back to the neighborhood where she died

Dave:

and we put a playground there.

Dave:

And as we put it there and the kids were singing, dancing, we

Dave:

spray painted Shaheen's name.

Dave:

There's a picture of that with my son, who's small then, right next to it.

Dave:

He was always pinching my son's cheek.

Dave:

Shaheen was always pinching Peter's cheek and

Dave:

I'll bite you little

Dave:

cute child, you little American

Dave:

and ver, funny guy,

Dave:

Shaheen.

Dave:

So to this day, there stands this playground named after

Dave:

Shaheen, who gave his life to help people who'd been his enemy.

Dave:

And it always hurts my heart to think about that, but I'm also grateful

Dave:

that what he did was of love,

Dave:

no matter what other

Dave:

people did, which is of hate.

Dave:

And that love is lasting.

Dave:

That playground is still lasting.

Dave:

One day that playground will go away, but that memory of that love will not go

Dave:

away.

Dave:

Yeah.I can imagine

Simon:

some people thinking this crazy American guy going

Simon:

in there, totally unaccountable

Simon:

or

Simon:

whatever.

Simon:

And yet you've

Simon:

just had such incredible grace and favor and boldness in Jesus name.

Simon:

I loved it in the film where you felt the Lord telling you to get

Simon:

on your knees before the general.

Simon:

Tell us

Simon:

about that.

Simon:

When I first

Dave:

went over to Iraq and even before I met Shaheen.

Dave:

I remember I had my son with me and an Iraqi defense

Dave:

minister.

Dave:

The actually

Dave:

Kurdish defense minister, the Beshmerga said, you brought your son,

Dave:

you brought your most precious thing.

Dave:

I give you my most precious thing, my country, go anywhere you want.

Dave:

Because we have our kids here.

Dave:

And I remember the Iraqi general saying, you brought your family,

Dave:

your whole family, your son and your daughters and your wife.

Dave:

You must thank God.

Dave:

Thanks, Iraqi children of the same value as American children

Dave:

because our children are here.

Dave:

You brought your family.

Dave:

You must not want anything from us.

Dave:

You brought your family.

Dave:

You must love us.

Dave:

We love you and we'll die for your family.

Dave:

These are experiences we've had

Dave:

together.

Dave:

And I don't take

Dave:

my family right to the front on purpose

Dave:

anyways.

Dave:

If families

Dave:

are there, they can be there.

Dave:

But in the middle of all that I'm with my son and I'm meeting these Iraqi leaders

Dave:

and when I'm done explaining what three room Rangers can do and how we can help in

Dave:

the front line, and I've made a favorable impression and they're work with us.

Dave:

I suddenly, I say, can I pray?

Dave:

Cause that's what I normally do.

Dave:

And they go, you pray Americans pray.

Dave:

We didn't know Americans believe in God anymore.

Dave:

Oh yeah.

Dave:

A lot of us do.

Dave:

In fact, that's why I'm here.

Dave:

The American church is why anything for me happens and the English church and the

Dave:

European church and the church

Dave:

of Asia were supported by Christians, not by the government.

Dave:

A lot of people believe in God.

Dave:

Oh, okay.

Dave:

We'll pray.

Dave:

And I closed my eyes and I felt God say, get on your knees.

Dave:

This is holy ground.

Dave:

Get on my knees.

Dave:

Don't think I'm a Christian nutcase.

Dave:

Like I'll be that old crusader, a weirdo, man.

Dave:

And I really felt God ask, are you afraid of me?

Dave:

Are you afraid of them?

Dave:

Okay, God, I'm afraid of you.

Dave:

And I got on my knees and I prayed.

Dave:

I lifted my hands up and I prayed in Jesus name in English.

Dave:

It was translated.

Dave:

And when I stood up, the Kurdish general said, I know you're like us.

Dave:

You believe in God, we can trust you.

Dave:

And that was my experience everywhere.

Dave:

And I got on my knees more than I ever have in my whole life.

Dave:

I didn't just do it as a matter of course, I never wanted to do it.

Dave:

But many times during that battle.

Dave:

I got on my knees with senior Iraqi and Kurdish generals, and

Dave:

I remember one time I had no translator when I got done praying.

Dave:

He said in very little English, I have no idea what you prayed,

Dave:

but I know you follow God.

Dave:

You're with us.

Dave:

So those are my experiences.

Dave:

It reminds me not to be ashamed of the gospel.

Dave:

We don't get on our knees or raise our hands over our heads to impress people.

Dave:

We do those things when our heart is stirred by God.

Dave:

And if they're given to God, then they're right.

Dave:

And I want to say something about being crazy or not crazy.

Dave:

I've learned this, nothing done of love is crazy.

Dave:

Nothing.

Dave:

If it's love, if it's not pride, hate, fear, anger, comfort, if it's

Dave:

love, and we need to check ourselves, I have to check myself all the time

Dave:

because I have all those other motives.

Dave:

If it's love, it's not crazy.

Dave:

It's right.

Dave:

It's worth doing now.

Dave:

There may be better ways to do it.

Dave:

That's for sure.

Dave:

But if it's love, it's right.

Simon:

Yeah.

Simon:

Oh, again, I remember that time where you rescued this family and they were

Simon:

hugging you and then you packed them off and a few moments later, boom, and

Simon:

they were, they were

Simon:

blown up by

Simon:

this bomb and you then

Simon:

go scoop up some dead, some alive and you were filled with a

Simon:

desire for revenge, weren't you?

Simon:

Yeah.

Simon:

Tell us about that.

Dave:

This was on the west side before the west side battle in the city itself

Dave:

on the outskirts between Mosul and Tal Afar, actually just the outskirts,

Dave:

probably not far where Jonah

Dave:

was looking over the city.

Dave:

There's high ground on the West side of Mosul and maybe that's

Dave:

where Jonah was, but that's where we were a place called Tel

Dave:

Keisuma and Sahaji and

Dave:

later on Badush, this area.

Dave:

So ISIS killing people every day.

Dave:

I'm with the Iraqi army.

Dave:

Iraqi army now is advancing and finally we liberate this little farm.

Dave:

And this little girl comes out and grabs my leg

Dave:

and yells America,

Dave:

and so loving.

Dave:

And The Iraqi

Dave:

man, he knew only a little bit of

Dave:

English.

Dave:

Thank you, on, good action.

Dave:

And, okay, you're all safe, and I'm so happy.

Dave:

It was like something good happened that day amongst a lot of death.

Dave:

His family was liberated, and they said, we're gonna go to our

Dave:

neighbors, because this whole area is liberated, and see them.

Dave:

We haven't been able, allowed by ISIS to go over there for three years.

Dave:

They load up their tractor, and they start going off.

Dave:

It's a tractor with a trailer

Dave:

on it.

Dave:

Tick tickk, tick, tick.

Dave:

And we start walking back up the hill, the fight's over.

Dave:

And I hear this boom!

Dave:

And ISIS had put landmines on their escape route, knowing these families

Dave:

had come there, and blew this family up.

Dave:

And that little three year old kid died in our arms as we tried to save her.

Dave:

And I was,tears came

Dave:

to my eyes.

Dave:

The Iraqi medics were crying.

Dave:

Our Karen guys were crying.

Dave:

It just, we'd seen a lot of dead people, but somehow that little girl and our

Dave:

connection with her just broke our heart.

Dave:

It was like, that was our little girl.

Dave:

And I turned to Monkey, one of the leaders of Freebirm Rangers, he's

Dave:

from Burma, same guy running behind the tank with me, filming it, that's

Dave:

how you can see, Monkey filmed that.

Dave:

I said, Monkey, we've got to go after ISIS, that's justice.

Dave:

We're going to share the gospel of Jesus.

Dave:

We're going to get food and medicine and clothes.

Dave:

We're going to treat wounded and in between we're going to

Dave:

kill as many ISIS as we can.

Dave:

They're just evil.

Dave:

Do you think it's right?

Dave:

He nods his head.

Dave:

And I said, okay, that's what we're going to do.

Dave:

And that night I said, Lord, Jesus, show me the truth about what happened today.

Dave:

And my commitment to add another mission to our humanitarian

Dave:

one, which is go after ISIS.

Dave:

It's justice.

Dave:

And I felt it was justice.

Dave:

And I woke up the next morning.

Dave:

I'd opened the Bible three times, three different ways at random.

Dave:

I took my Kindle, put my finger randomly, and I got the same

Dave:

message three times in a row.

Dave:

Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay.

Dave:

I'm like, what?

Dave:

Of course I know that verse, but I found it three times in a row by accident.

Dave:

And then I said, Oh, what I call justice was

Dave:

revenge.

Dave:

God, what's

Dave:

the difference?

Dave:

The difference is love.

Dave:

When you want justice, there must be love somewhere in

Dave:

there, even for the perpetrator.

Dave:

Even though the most loving thing may be life imprisonment,

Dave:

or some kind of punishment to

Dave:

change them.

Dave:

Or maybe even

Dave:

shooting them in a certain situation to stop them from killing

Dave:

others, but it will be done in love.

Dave:

Vengeance is like, I don't care what happens, I want to crush you.

Dave:

That's not justice.

Dave:

And the difference between justice and revenge

Dave:

is love.

Dave:

I was just

Dave:

suddenly struck by that.

Dave:

That's the Holy Spirit.

Dave:

That's how God works through Scripture.

Dave:

And I said, Jesus, Forgive me for wanting revenge.

Dave:

Please forgive me that sin and I give it up.

Dave:

And it was like a 2000 pound weight was lifted off my shoulder instantaneously.

Dave:

And it was a weight I didn't know I carried.

Dave:

I had no idea.

Dave:

And I had no idea that I was sinning and I gave it up.

Dave:

And I remember going into battle that day thinking I do not

Dave:

have to make anything right.

Dave:

I do not have to kill any ISIS.

Dave:

I can, but I don't have to.

Dave:

There's a big difference.

Dave:

I'm free.

Dave:

Yeah.

Dave:

Even if I get killed today, all I have to be is an ambassador of Jesus.

Dave:

And so Jesus forgave me my revenge, and then he liberated me from it.

Dave:

Because who knows what that would have done to me over time.

Dave:

What looked like righteous indignation and anger would be revenge.

Dave:

In the end, that's of Satan.

Dave:

God says, vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay.

Dave:

Only God can handle revenge.

Dave:

He's the only one who can handle it.

Dave:

He knows we can't handle it.

Dave:

We can handle justice and we're supposed to.

Dave:

So that was one of the biggest, two biggest gifts I got out of the battle of

Dave:

Mosul in Iraq was to love Iraqi people.

Dave:

Love them.

Dave:

Whenever I see them, no matter who they are, I love them.

Dave:

That's just God's gift to me.

Dave:

And then second, to know the difference between revenge and justice and to have

Dave:

God's forgiveness and grace in that.

Simon:

Yeah.

Simon:

Oh, Dave, this is so

Simon:

good.

Simon:

Listen we got to vaguely come

Simon:

into land.

Simon:

What I do want to shift back though

Simon:

is because we've talked

Simon:

mostly about your encounters in Iraq.

Simon:

I want to get back to

Simon:

Myanmar, Burma just because

Simon:

that is your main field of operations for the last

Simon:

25 years.

Simon:

Can you give us any, I, again,

Simon:

in the film, I think of those times when those two precious ladies were raped

Simon:

and then brutally murdered.

Simon:

And but key moments

Simon:

like that where again, the power of telling the story and

Simon:

you became, you're the

Simon:

authoritative voice on what was happening, alerting the world

Simon:

through Al Jazeera or BBC or whoever.

Simon:

Just tell us a bit on that before we close.

Dave:

Burma has always been our main effort and still is.

Dave:

And as you said, you saw in the documentary, those ladies

Dave:

who were raped and then

Dave:

beat to death broke our

Dave:

hearts.

Dave:

And it was another encounter where.

Dave:

We could just only follow Jesus.

Dave:

And Burma has now become worse.

Dave:

It's the longest running civil war in the world, 74 years now.

Dave:

And since the Burma army took even more power in what was called a coup three

Dave:

years ago, even more vicious attacks.

Dave:

And the Burman people who comprise about half the country joined the

Dave:

ethnic resistance three years ago.

Dave:

And so now the dictators are actually losing.

Dave:

They control less than one third of Burma, but they control all the major big cities.

Dave:

And they have jet fighters from Russia, jet fighters from China

Dave:

attack helicopters from Russia.

Dave:

Artillery from China and Russia and North Korea, rocket systems,

Dave:

missile systems, drones from Iran.

Dave:

And they're just pouring it on people.

Dave:

And so the amount of death and destruction, we've lost over 60 of

Dave:

our team killed trying to help people.

Dave:

It's been brutal and rapes, murders, burning people alive.

Dave:

These are all things that are happening right now.

Dave:

I remembered two years ago, 2022, February the 24th, coincidentally, the

Dave:

same day that Russia invaded Ukraine.

Dave:

Up to the buildup of the Ukrainian invasion, people were asking me, Hey,

Dave:

send Freedom Ranger teams to help in case Ukraine gets invaded while I'm in

Dave:

Burma going, nobody cares about Burma.

Dave:

I'm not going to go to Ukraine.

Dave:

Ukraine's just as important, but people are there.

Dave:

And I, but I said, okay, I'll obey God.

Dave:

If God wants us to go, we'll go.

Dave:

But I felt no

Dave:

conviction to go.

Dave:

On the 24th

Dave:

of February, Burma was attacking heavily in Trini state.

Dave:

I was up there.

Dave:

We were in our like 15th or 20th day of heavy fighting every day.

Dave:

I would go out with 30, 40 guys.

Dave:

Look, I look at them and go forward and we'll be dead.

Dave:

But by the time it stays over.

Dave:

So just scary, sad, brutal Burma.

Dave:

He's coming with airplanes, attack, helicopters, artillery, mortars,

Dave:

machine guns, troops, just overrunning people fighting back with muskets

Dave:

was single shot, 22 rifles and shotguns, very few modern weapons,

Dave:

just fighting for their lives.

Dave:

And finally we are hit very hard.

Dave:

Everybody retreats and I take my team.

Dave:

To search and make sure there's nobody left behind.

Dave:

We're the last people out of this town.

Dave:

And the airplane's coming.

Dave:

I still, I couldn't see the pilot.

Dave:

But, cause the sun was on the canopy.

Dave:

He's aiming his plane right at us.

Dave:

Dives down real low and starts, drops a bomb.

Dave:

40 meters from us.

Dave:

We should have killed us.

Dave:

But I was down in a, jumped in a ditch.

Dave:

And a shrapnel went over me and I got concussed.

Dave:

But I didn't get killed.

Dave:

But the guy next to me was killed.

Dave:

His name is Rito.

Dave:

My daughter taught him how to swim.

Dave:

Because they will come back from university and join our trainings

Dave:

and she taught him how to swim.

Dave:

And very close to my kids, he's 20, my daughter's now 21 and 23 and he was 23.

Dave:

He's dead.

Dave:

And I'm dragging his body and the plane's coming again.

Dave:

I get wounded.

Dave:

My, one of my guys gets more badly wounded.

Dave:

Got this dead guy.

Dave:

Finally get his body out.

Dave:

We're pinned down for two hours by multiple airstrikes,

Dave:

bombs, rockets hunting us.

Dave:

We get out of that.

Dave:

Put the dead body.

Dave:

In a safe place, we can get it later.

Dave:

I go to help other people escape.

Dave:

The sun's starting to set, finally come back, take care of the dead

Dave:

body, do the funeral the next day.

Dave:

I'm covered in blood.

Dave:

And I remember saying, Jesus, I'm done.

Dave:

I have no more energy left.

Dave:

I have no more.

Dave:

I'm too sad.

Dave:

I'm too scared.

Dave:

I feel hopeless.

Dave:

If you want me to continue tomorrow.

Dave:

You have to do something.

Dave:

I got nothing

Dave:

left.

Dave:

And I woke up

Dave:

the next day, Simon, I was ready to go.

Dave:

And I thought that's the power of Jesus to do what I couldn't do alone.

Dave:

And then someone said, come to you, come to Ukraine.

Dave:

And I was like, no way.

Dave:

Nobody's helping here.

Dave:

My one of my best buddies, my kid's friends is dead.

Dave:

I'm going to go to Ukraine.

Dave:

Ukraine's just as important, but people are helping in

Dave:

Ukraine, nobody's helping here.

Dave:

Is it because they're little brown people?

Dave:

What's the deal?

Dave:

But I said, of course, if God sends me, I'll go.

Dave:

But I didn't go then.

Dave:

I stayed in Burma.

Dave:

But it was finally that Ukrainian girl coming the next year, Julia,

Dave:

who said to the people, don't feed your fear, Feed your faith.

Dave:

I thought we could

Dave:

do that in Ukraine.

Dave:

So Simon, we started going to Ukraine.

Dave:

Just small little trips, three times.

Dave:

We've gone as a team.

Dave:

I've only gone once.

Dave:

I'm, I've been going again in a couple months, just two, three weeks.

Dave:

We're with you in Jesus' name.

Dave:

That's kinda all we do.

Dave:

And a little bit of medical help and help the local chaplains.

Dave:

So we are involved in Ukraine now 'cause God put that on our heart as well.

Dave:

But our main effort's, Burma and Burma right now is.

Dave:

Facing the most violent activity and action it's seen since World War II.

Dave:

The Burma military coming with a speed and a force we have never

Dave:

seen, slaughtering their own people.

Dave:

I was just in a monastery, Buddhist monastery, with civilians that

Dave:

belonged to the Burma army.

Dave:

And they said, we can hide here.

Dave:

The Burma army said, you'll be safe there.

Dave:

I said, you will not be safe, they'll kill you.

Dave:

No, we belong to the Burma army.

Dave:

They don't care.

Dave:

They're going to kill you.

Dave:

Three days later, there was an airstrike on that monastery and

Dave:

eight were killed, including a beautiful young girl and 15 wounded.

Dave:

It was horrible.

Dave:

We got the bodies out.

Dave:

We got the people out.

Dave:

They all fled the next day, more airstrikes demolished the

Dave:

monastery.

Dave:

Every single

Dave:

hospital in current state Burma has been bombed.

Dave:

Every single one.

Dave:

Every clinic I know up there has been bombed.

Dave:

Every hospital in current state's been bombed.

Dave:

Same with chin state.

Dave:

Every place I know of most schools, not all, but most schools and churches

Dave:

have been bombed and monasteries.

Dave:

Because the Burma army knows this is where people are hiding.

Dave:

At the same time, this evil is going on supported by Russia, China,

Dave:

North Korea, Iran, and others at the same time, this is going on.

Dave:

There is a hunger for the gospel.

Dave:

I've never seen before.

Dave:

We baptized more people than we've ever seen before.

Dave:

And more people coming to Jesus saying this is all that works and

Dave:

there's a unity we've never seen before and this unity in Burma cuts

Dave:

between social, economic, political, religious, racial, and tribal lines.

Dave:

It's a unity saying us Burmans and us ethnics.

Dave:

Have to work together for a democratic and free Burma and we're not going to give up.

Dave:

So in the middle of all this, Simon, I have hope.

Dave:

My biggest hope is in Jesus who brings good from all

Dave:

things, who takes us to heaven.

Dave:

And my hope on this earth is that we actually can, all of us, as we obey

Dave:

Jesus, make God's kingdom on earth a little bit as it is in heaven, which

Dave:

is what Jesus taught us to pray.

Dave:

And every act of love you do adds to that piece of heaven on this

Dave:

earth, and we can enjoy that.

Dave:

So right now we're, I'm going right back into Burma in a couple of days.

Dave:

Please pray for us that we're doing

Dave:

God's will.

Dave:

Don't get

Dave:

blown up.

Dave:

I know that last prayer is pretty selfish, but I ask it anyway.

Dave:

And thanks for this opportunity to share.

Simon:

Wow, Dave, this has just been such an

Simon:

incredible listen.

Simon:

We've run

Simon:

out of time, but I want you to give a parting challenge to us as

Simon:

listeners and also to the audience.

Simon:

Just say how we can help you.

Simon:

I'll put all the stuff, the details in the blurb for the podcast

Simon:

afterwards.

Simon:

But close out

Simon:

with those two things, please.

Dave:

My encouragement to everyone is don't give up.

Dave:

God hasn't given up and you can never do enough bad to stop Jesus from loving you.

Dave:

Keep taking his forgiveness.

Dave:

Keep extending it to others.

Dave:

And keep following Him.

Dave:

Keep stepping away from sin.

Dave:

And keep loving even those who sin.

Dave:

And then have boldness that Jesus gives you to confront those

Dave:

sins in the way He tells you to.

Dave:

If He doesn't tell you to do it, don't do it.

Dave:

And act out of love.

Dave:

Anything done out of love is not crazy.

Dave:

It's, if it's really love and you're not led by other things, then God will

Dave:

give you the peace to do that or not.

Dave:

But it's not crazy.

Dave:

I feel grateful, Simon, that you have this show that people listen

Dave:

and care, and my request is people pray for us if they wanna support us.

Dave:

We're called the Free Boomer Rangers.

Dave:

Our website is www.freeboomrangers.org.

Dave:

You can find information there.

Dave:

My email is eubank at P.

Dave:

O.

Dave:

Box dot com.

Dave:

E U B A N K at P.

Dave:

O.

Dave:

Box dot com.

Dave:

And we have this documentary, Free Burma Rangers, you can get it on

Dave:

Amazon Prime or RightNow Video or some other Christian platforms.

Dave:

I wrote a book called Do This For Love, Free Burma Rangers in the Battle of Mosul.

Dave:

You can get that on Amazon.

Dave:

It's not a great book, but it's true.

Dave:

And if God leads you to pray for us, that'd be wonderful.

Dave:

If it leads you to support in some way, we're grateful.

Dave:

Wonderful.

Dave:

Listen, bro I hope there'll

Simon:

be a good take up on that.

Simon:

And guys, I watched

Simon:

it at 7.

Simon:

99 on Amazon prime and it blew me away.

Simon:

And I had repeatedly tears in my eyes that these just unbelievable encounters

Simon:

and the gratitude and people's faces, and they're just the rawness of the footage.

Simon:

Ah.

Simon:

So

Simon:

listen, Dave thanks for

Simon:

your time and get back to the jungle in the next

Simon:

couple of days and stay well.

Simon:

And we'll be praying for you, cheering you on, and just really

Simon:

appreciate you sharing this with us.

Simon:

Bye, Simon.

Simon:

Thanks

Dave:

for the encouragement.

Simon:

Wonderful.

Simon:

Hey, folks.

Simon:

Listen, I don't think very few of us could relate to what Dave's been through, but

Simon:

we can be inspired to, to be fearless.

Simon:

and bold and I love the sort of the perfect love cast out here, doesn't it?

Simon:

And love underpins all that he's involved in.

Simon:

Bless him, Karen, the kids who are now not little

Simon:

kids, grown up and listen,

Simon:

as I said, I'll put stuff in the blurb so that you can track with

Simon:

him and I'd love you to give us a great review on Spotify or iTunes.

Simon:

If you want to be in touch with me at SimonGilbert.

Simon:

com.

Simon:

I want to thank Adam Thomas Steer for the editing, Mike Sandeman for the mixing.

Simon:

Next week, another fantastic guest to be inspired by.

Simon:

By the meantime, God bless and toodaloo.

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