RYAN WATSON | Turks and Chaos (Ep. 926)

Let's be honest, most men drift. We wake up, we scroll, we work, and then we just rinse and repeat. And we know we're softer than we should be. That's why I built the 31-day resilience reset. This is not a devotional. It is a field manual for men ready to stop drifting and start fighting back. So, for 31 days, you'll train your spirit, mind, and body with scripture, prayer, and daily challenges that forge real resilience. Go to www.undaunted.life/31days to download this resource for free. That's undaunted.life/31days. Start your reset today. >> [music] >> This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. Ryan Watson, welcome to the show. Welcome to the house. Welcome to the podcast studio. Thank you so much for having me. >> Did you ever think in a million years you'd be doing like a bunch of podcasts, that you'd write a book, like do all that kind of stuff? That was like perfectly in your wheelhouse. I was in your 3-5 year plan, wasn't it? >> Uh yeah, not the not anything that was on my bingo card. I promise you that. Well, yeah, you've had uh you've had quite a few experiences. And pull that mic right up to your face there, but uh you've had so many like crazy experiences, but like I mean, you're an Okie. And that's part of the thing like about your story. You know, and we'll get in your story. And I talked about it a little bit on the show as it was all kind of occurring. But, it's like considering how you grew up, considering kind of what you and your your wife were doing, like we're in the same kind of school community and in all these different things, like this just was never None of this was really supposed to happen. And so, like it's kind of one of those things, Ryan, when I tell guys I tell guys goal setting is fine, but it's just not nearly as good as having standards. Cuz I feel like if you do Cuz like in business, they try to get you to set your 3-5 year goals, and what are your stretch goals, and what are your smart goals, and all that. And I'm like, most guys aren't struggling in life cuz they suck at goal setting. Like it's it's it doesn't really have anything to do with that. It has a whole lot more to do with the fact that they have no idea what's about to befall them. And so if all of your stuff is predicated on you being healthy, staying in your same job, never being betrayed by like a business partner or a family member, all your kids are, you know, awesome and perfect, and they don't have any problems or health issues or all that. And then it just it's like, okay guys, at some point you got to realize that that this is not going to be a perfect, you know, pathway. You just need to take the next right step, you know what I mean? >> 100% yeah. It's It's you know, I I I I've thought a lot about just kind of how much I could have potentially um done differently or you know, I've thought a lot about the bags and and what could I have done in terms of all of the things. And when when we get into kind of how chance of how much of a freak chance that this actually was Right. you start to realize like you cannot plan for everything. Like you you think that you can, but I think you're right. I think having uh just kind of a fabric and a standard set of standards that you build your life around and then at what what God puts in front of you, then then that's going to determine kind of how you respond. So >> Well, and and so there's some people that are probably already lost like, what do you mean bags? What do you mean any that So So we're we're going to get there. And so what we're going to do and and you wrote this in the book and we'll we'll get to the book towards the end of the story. But really where the story begins for you is you had a very tight-knit group of friends. And like, you know, I I kind of experienced the same thing where, you know, me and my guy friends of a certain group, we all had girlfriends at the same time. We all end up marrying those girlfriends and then you just kind of you stay friends into your 20s and your 30s and then going into your 40s and things like that and then families expand, you have kids, you do kind of group things. And so here you are, you're coming up on your 40th birthday, and you and kind of that group of people, you're thinking, "Okay, well, you know, we can just go to dinner here in Oklahoma, or we can, you know, make a trip to Dallas or St. Louis or Kansas City or something like that." But y'all were kind of thinking, "Okay, no, 40th birthday, let's try to do a little bit more of a blowout." So like, "Hey, we got some, you know, cash burning a hole in our pocket." And so take us back to that time where it's like, "Okay, 39 going on 40." And you're like, "Okay, let's let's kind of light this up." Yeah, you know, I I think that we had all kind of been hoping that we would have some big benchmark occasion for our 40th birthday, right? Like a lot of people want to go climb a mountain or or check something off off their bucket list. For us, it was just about putting ourselves in a situation away from you know, you know, the responsibilities that that we have been blessed with. Right. Um but uh just go relive and and act uh as we were you know, in college when we all met and started, you know, just try to create a couple new memories uh that we could carry on. Uh but but yeah, it uh so we started throwing out ideas of what a vacation, dream vacation would look like. Ours differed from the other two couples. Uh we got outvoted, but but uh at the end of >> you want to do? My wife and I So my wife and I love Costa Rica. So something adventurous in Costa Rica, we love white water rafting there. I also really wanted to go to Argentina. Mhm. Uh I feel like you can kind of do just about anything there and you know, And if there was a red stag that needed to be taken out, you know, maybe you could help with that, you know. The dove hunting, like the the dove hunting in Argentina is supposed to be insane. >> I've heard of I've had buddies go down there and do that, yeah. So I I wanted something that we could go and you know, put another notch in our belt, so to speak. But, uh but they they were looking for something a little bit more relaxing and they just wanted to go be numb on a beach, you know, and and not not my ideal vacation, but at the end of the day, it was about being with that group of friends and and create new memories as well. >> When y'all will get to the We'll get to the moral of the story here in a little bit, but here's the moral of the story and this is from a ginger and I can tell you from my own experience, go where the sun is not available, right? So, the beach, there's not a lot of trees that can cover you from the sun and so sitting there just being lazy, drinking piña coladas, it's a terrible idea in all circumstances, guys. So, let's kind of keep that in mind, but [laughter] so we need to go to April 7th. This is This is 2024. Yeah, so April 7th, 2024. All right, the the decision was made like as a as a group, we're going to Turks and Caicos. We're doing kind of the the resort life thing. We're doing the beach thing, you know, where we're going to have a good time, no kids. I kind of do that whole thing and it was three couples or four couples. There we go. >> There were three of us couples. >> Okay, so three couples total. And so it's April 7th and it's time to go to the airport and so your lovely bride, Val, I guess wanted to double back because she was a little concerned about kind of the weight in one of the bags and so let's pick it up from there. >> She I'm almost all the way out of our our driveway. We live on some property, so we have a a pretty long driveway. >> Yeah. And you know, she stops and and kind of turns and looks at me and has that look and I was like, "Oh, [inaudible]. She She >> Don't say it. >> [laughter] >> Don't say it. Um and so she said, "I think my bag's too heavy." I said, "Babe, I think I think we're fine. Like, let's We're If it is, on the chance that it is, I'll pay it. It's not a big deal. We're behind schedule." You know, she batted her eyes at me a few times and I'm She's way better looking than I am, so >> [laughter] >> I uh I I kind of know my place, so I I reluctantly put the car back in drive, pulled up to the house, and and she jumped out, ran into the house, uh reappeared couple minutes later with a rolling duffel bag, and that was a part of a luggage set that we'd received when we were uh when we got married, and uh she pulls it out, throws it in the car, um and then next thing you know, we're off to Will Rogers Airport. We Once we get to the garage, we we pull that bag out. She looks through the bag. So, like it needs to be stated. I know a lot of uh news organizations and media personalities said that we never checked pockets, and a lot of internet warriors, [snorts] you know, just um just burned us uh time and time again saying that we were irresponsible. Checked every pocket in in the bag. Um everything was clear, the bag was empty. We throw some of her belongings into that bag to offset the weight. She um then next thing you know, we're off. She ends up carrying that bag uh through TSA. So, she carries it on uh to the plane with her. So, we're you know, we went when we went through TSA, nothing was amiss, nothing was strange or different, nothing was flagged. Um you know, it was just business as usual, if you will. And so, completely unbenounced to us, uh you know, there was something else you know, floating around in that bag. So, All right. So, before we get into all the stuff about the bag, what was in the bag, all that kind of stuff, how was the vacation? Did y'all have fun? Did y'all eat some good meals? You have some good drinks? >> Yeah, the vacation was good. Um you know we went out on a boat, and you know, did a little boat tour. Uh uh We the Actually, the thing that was the most fun was we we rented these eFoil boards, which was like a surfboard that has a foil, so like a long fin underneath it. >> goes down into the Okay. >> down in the water and it's got a little electric motor on the bottom of it. So, you rise up out of the water whenever you're >> Okay, those seem super sketchy. I like I just watching people do it like is it as bad as it seems cuz I'm like It is what's funny is my wife was actually the best out of everybody on this thing, which um it was I actually ended up breaking my rib on the efoil board. I I fell off to one side Oh, no. accidentally hit the and you have a little controller in your in your hand. I actually hit the gas pedal as or as I was falling off >> and that thing shot up out of the water and hit me in the ribs. >> So, it is super sketchy. Okay, all right. Yeah, [laughter] yeah, it's like mega sketchy. But But you survived that, so yeah, it worked out. You know, it was one of those things that you know, when you break a rib, you're just a proud owner of a broken rib. So, it's you know, quit your sulking. >> You're just think about it every time [laughter] you breathe in or breathe out until it decides to stop hurting. Yeah, so but no, I mean it was it was a good time. I mean, for the most part, you know, like I said, not probably our ideal vacation. It was it's it's a relaxing thing, but uh but all in all, it was there was some good memories made. So, you're there for several days. You're doing kind of the normal thing. You spend the money to go there. While you're there, you're spending money. Like the the island is making money off of your tourism. And now it's time to go. And so, now we're in we're April 12th, right? So, this is 5 days later from from your arrival. And you're you're trying to leave uh the island and you're I believe your friends had gotten through uh the security checkpoints and all that. They're just kind of waiting on y'all cuz y'all are all on the the same flight. And then y'all are having a little bit of an issue uh kind of getting through. So, let's let's go there. Yeah, yeah, we had all gotten broken up. Uh there was a delayed flight. Um you know, when we got over there was a several delayed flights. And so, we had paid for this expedited process that basically skirts you to the front of the security line. Um, the people that did not have this were quite upset. And so, next thing you know, it turns into a shoving match and people are moving their bins in front of us and in order to like just not completely tick off the rest of the crowd, we all kind of just separated separated and got in where we where it was least uh uh confrontational. And so, I end up making it through uh before Valerie does and I'm sitting in a little duty-free shop just looking through the glass, checking in on her from time to time. And uh next thing you know, um I catch her um through the glass of of this duty-free shop standing next to the security line. I'm like, "What's she doing?" And so, I walk out, I walk up to her. "Hey, what's going on?" She's like, "Hey, they're going through the duffel bag." I was like, "Well, your makeup kit's in there. No big deal. It's got to be you've got some liquid in there. No big deal." So, it um you you know nobody's nothing serious at this point though. Like, we're all kind of ribbing each other and we're all joking with Valerie, "What are they going to find?" Um next thing you know, we look over, they start taking all the items out of her bag. They start running the items through individually. Then they start running the empty bag through the scanner and we're like, "Golly, they are like looking for something." And uh maybe we're probably 15 minutes goes by, the lady finally brings the empty bag over and she is searching. She's looking in the bag, she's feeling around in the bag, kind of palpating. And she finds a zipper at the bottom of this bag which unzips the lining and she starts pulling on it and you can hear the bag tear a little bit. And next thing you know, she pulls the lining apart, sticks her hand in the in between the lining and there's a padded cushion. And she fishes around for a little bit next thing you know, you kind of see her eyes light up and I thought uh-oh, what's what'd she find? And she pulls it out, runs over to the screen the x-ray screen and where another security officer sitting. They she shows that security officer you kind of see this emphatic head nod come from the other security officer and then she walks over with just beaming with pride and holds up this little bag. And it it takes several several awkward minutes of me standing there staring at this little bag of ammunition to realize that's my ammunition. That's the ammunition that I use when I go hunting. Um there's a little village tactical on May here in Oklahoma City that they sell reloaded hunting reloaded 6.5 Creedmoor ammunition. And I recognize the packaging immediately and I thought, oh no, like this is this isn't good. Then that kind of voice in the back of your head kicks back in and voice you know, it's trying to calm you down and it says and it's telling me hey Ryan, like you've had plenty of friends do this like you've heard about you know, guys on hunting trips that have mistakenly left ammunition somewhere. All of them get like a slap on the wrist and you know, it gets thrown in the trash and then they're on their way. So I quickly kind of calm myself back down and think, this is going to be a slap on the wrist. I'm going to get a you know, a talking to and we'll be on our way. Hey guys, real quick. I know a lot of you train for very specific things. 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[laughter] Uh you know, if if you if you agree with the memes on the internet, but uh when you talk to uh like guides, I've talked to so many hunting guides that they're like, "What what's your rifle?" Cuz if it's 6.5 Creedmoor, I'll let you use mine because it's like I don't want to be tracking an animal [laughter] for the next 10 years and 10 miles. Okay, so so you've got these reloaded rounds, and you're right, Ryan. Like I've I've talked to plenty of guys, plenty of Okies that have gone to overseas, gone to Canada, gone to, you know, uh Utah, like they're going on a sheep or elk hunt or something like that, and there's a loose round or two, and some guys even a full box of ammo, right? Cuz they thought it was going to be in the check bag, but they threw it back in the this bag and whatever all the things. And so, it really shouldn't be that that big of a deal, but almost immediately, you, and I want to get the language exactly right, that you were being placed, you and your wife, were being placed [clears throat] under arrest for suspicion of possession of ammunition, which is already awkwardly worded because they're holding a bag of it that was in y'all's possession. But then, so so that has to be kind of like a big, you know, mind, you know, what, and you're just like, "Okay, wait wait, what? We're we're being placed under arrest?" But then, almost immediately, emphatically and with a lot of joy, you were informed by security that this carries a minimum prison sentence of 12 years, according to the law there in Turks and Caicos. And so, we go from we're a little bit late, we're getting into a little bit of a kerfuffle with people in the line that don't like that we, you know, cut them on, you know, even though we were able to do it. You're duty-free, and you see your wife in a different position. You go over there, they find they find the stuff. They they're tear they tore your bag, so that probably made you a little bit unnerved a little bit, but then you see the rounds, you you kind of have that spike of adrenaline, and then you kind of come back out down to okay, let's just be reasonable. It's not going to be that big a deal. And then you're just hit with two sledgehammers in a row. You're both being arrested. And we're talking about 12 years in prison. Yeah. So, what in the world was that like? You know, at first I thought it was just a intimidation tactic, right? Like I thought that they were Like a strong-arm thing like >> Yeah. And so it took them repeating it two to three times before it truly sank in that this was reality. You know, you know, the the first thought I have honestly is failure, you know because we make a vow to protect our wives, and I have just now created a scenario that is potentially going to keep my wife um in prison away from our children. Um and it's for a lot of in a lot of you know, sense it's it it Falls on your shoulders. Falls on my shoulders, right? Like and so I felt like a like I had failed, and you you try not to accept it at first, and you start to see your mind scatter and go in a million different directions to think how can I weasel or get out of this situation? What what how can I finagle this? Um and you realize pretty quickly when you're in that situation a third-world country you know, in the custody of of the police department like all your all of our typical bargaining chips are out the window, and you really start to run out of you know, cards to play quick. Yeah, you realize you you basically don't have any any cars to play and you're playing by someone else's rules. And one thing that was interesting and you know, we don't need him to mention the school system cuz there's much of weirdos on the internet that would love to know where our kids go to school, but so almost immediately the school where your wife was a teacher back home here in Oklahoma, like the principal she doesn't just go oh my gosh, this is unfortunate news cuz eventually kind of the news gets back around to kind of that y'all had been detained what you were facing. This was a quick thing which kind of goes to the community that y'all had which we'll talk more about later. But almost immediately she was reaching out to the governor of the state Kevin Stitt and to our mutual buddy who wasn't your buddy at the time, but Senator Mark Wayne Mullen now the director of the Department of Homeland Security right? Or surrector secretary surrector. I just made up a new position for you Mark Wayne. So there you go. You're welcome. >> [laughter] >> But yeah, so he's the the secretary of DHS now to immediately get them involved like hey, we have Oklahoma residents your constituents that are in this this issue. At this point it seems like okay, there must be a misunderstanding that that's taken place. And so just kind of talk about the those initial I I guess you could even say few hours cuz at some point you had to wave your friends on so they could you know make their flight. They assume y'all will be on the next flight out or maybe that you're going to catch the flight before it leaves. And so just talk about those that so it's the realization has set in. We're not leaving today, right? Or it's it's April 12th. We're not getting off this island on April 12th, but your kids are with you know responsible adults that can take care of them. You think maybe or at this point right now are you thinking hey, we're going to be delayed a day or two? Like what what are you thinking that is the scenario? Yeah, I I'm thinking that at at some point somebody's going to come ask me for money. I I'm thinking that this is going to be a shake shake down. And so, you know, I'm constantly trying to evaluate every conversation to see if there's, you know, a tip of the hand to say to open the opportunity for me to offer a bribe, right? And And so, I'm constantly evaluating that. I'm I'm trying to discern, is this truly a law, right? Like, is there truly a law that mandates a 12-year prison sentence for the mere possession of ammunition? And you know, on top of And then, in addition to that, you start to run through, okay, who do we know that could potentially even help us in this situation? Um and to your point, you know, that school became such a springboard of >> [sighs and gasps] >> just just a network springboard of of connections that allowed us and my wife and I talked a lot about it. Like, we feel like God used that. Like undeniably like used that, used us because we were connected to the right people that could potentially make a difference, right? You know, at the time we didn't know, right? These were all just desperate prayers for help or you know, >> And so, so you're getting help from obviously back home, but then pretty quickly you're realizing like, okay, y'all's bail had been set at $10,000, but this wasn't like, okay, so go ahead and wire some money or blah blah blah. Like, you had to find a local, a Turks and Caicos local to put up their personal assets to to cover this bond. And also, you have to find a local attorney because jurisdictionally speaking, you couldn't just, you know, call you know, even if you had a or on retainer back in Oklahoma, like they they couldn't help you in this other country. And so, guys, just think about if you've ever been on a vacation and you go to a resort and all that and then now all of a sudden you're put in this predicament where you have to find someone that is willing to put up five figures worth of their personal assets, which on an island like this, it you're you're not talking to a lot of people that have that kind of money. Right. And that's the position you've all been put in. You can't use your own assets to get yourself out of the situation. You can't use your own assets to get get you in a better position in your situation. You have to depend on locals and you have to find a a local attorney that's somehow not on the take in terms of this whole government scheme. And so, what in the world is that like? Yeah, I don't think that they actually thought we could pull it off. I don't think I don't I'm not convinced that they thought that there was a local that would be willing to put up what they called surety, which was this asset. And I think that they were just kind of toying with us, to be honest with you. Um we had our cell phones in that interrogation room. And so, we start sending out text messages to the couples that were with us. And telling them what our situation was, what's now been required of us in order to just to just be on what they called a temporary police bail, to go to go to a hotel room so that we could get our affairs in order over the weekend. Cuz this was a Friday at like 3:30. And they um they said, "Well, Ryan, you know, Reuben, who was our driver, who drove us, you know, to and from, you know, the restaurants on the island, uh Reuben's the only contact that we have. Like, we get one shot at this. Um and you know, there was debate on whether or not he would truly do it, A, and B, whether or not he truly had an asset that was the equivalent of $10,000. Um and that it was that is no not knock uh to him or his family. That is just a reality of the island, right? And um luckily for us we had been during one of the car rides. I I I don't remember where we were going or where we were coming from. We got to talk to talking to Reuben and sharing a little bit with him about our faith. And then next thing you know, he starts to share with us about his faith and how he considers himself uh considered himself a blackjack minister. And so, he would go to the local casino there on the island and in in his own words minister uh to the fellow degenerates that were sitting there losing their money. And um and so, it it turns out that this this this driver, this guy who was a stranger, uh had a a giant heart for the Lord. And we found that one piece in common, right? Like you know, I think if you plucked both of us out and you you ran stat sheets on on uh you know, me versus Reuben we looked quite different, right? You know, in life lifestyle, uh just who we are, uh however, there was one common bond and it was that we were both true believers, right? And so we were when our friends made the call and reached out to Reuben to see if he would be willing to come put up his asset, you know, Val and I got down in the interrogation room immediately and prayed and just said, "Man, Lord, we hope that we've impressed upon him enough that he might find it in his heart to do something that is pretty unspeakable. Um I've tried to put myself in his situation Yeah. of what it would be like to be here in the United States have some, you know, a few chance encounters with a foreigner, and then receive this phone call out of the blue to say, "Hey, they're in trouble. Would you put up one of your personal assets to guarantee that they'll stay on bail and they they won't flee. They'll I don't know I I I don't know if I can say honestly that I would have done it. Well, I think there's this, you know, Ryan, we live in this era where nobody trusts anybody. We don't trust the government. We don't trust >> Yeah. you know, uh big institutions and and there's scams everywhere. Like my wife and I have had to have this discussion cuz we're 900-plus episodes in now. I'm like, AI bots have enough of my voice and my my personality and all that to create a bot that could call you from a number and sound a lot like me and request, "Hey, I'm in I'm in this predicament. I need you. Like I need you to wire money to this number. I need you to do all these different things." And she and I, we have a code word that, you know, we have said and I would encourage everybody to have that, especially if you're in a position where you have your voice and face recorded all the time. And it's like, "Hey, we have to work that code word into the discussion naturally to know that, hey, you're talking to me and not to my bot." Same thing with my audience. Like there's people, you know, there are probably ads out there using my voice and likeness for, you know, companies that I would never support and and never be a part of. And so we have this natural aversion to help because of what we've seen and how we've seen people get taken advantage of. I mean, how many banks are are were trying to help all their senior citizen clients to just not get scammed out of their entire life savings cuz they're sitting there lonely and you have this person that befriends them and kind of goes that route. And so So, timeline-wise, so that's the 12th. Now we get into the 13th. So, when you reached out to Ruben, first of all, like I like how did that go? Where did that conversation lead? And then we'll we'll get into the 13th. >> Yeah, he dropped everything immediately. He had passengers in his car whenever he got the phone call. He He dropped them off at their destination and then immediately headed to it wasn't truly a a police station. It was a police kind of substation, I guess, if you will. There wasn't like a jail there. There was just a bunch of interrogation rooms. And like a they're surrounded a center um it just looked like an office building. And the center was just a bunch of cubicles and desks. And anyways, he he drove there immediately. And next thing you know, I mean, we hear his normal his just kind of infectious like cackle of a laugh. It's it's distinctly Ruben. And we hear it coming down the hallway. And it was like our first sign of God being like, I got you in this, right? Like I it was like that first Okay, we finally have some bit of hope or or some bit of lifeline in the situation which we had just been cut from all lifelines. Well, and as as guys are going to realize, you know, if they read the book, which guys, the the book Turks and Chaos is in the show notes, you can go and check it out. But also, even throughout this conversation, the ebbs and flows of hope and you know, optimism and just the absolute doldrums and the worst of the worst feelings happens because Now, that's that's all happening on the 12th. Now, we get to the 13th. And y'all learn about a guy named Michael Grimm. Yes. And not almost immediately, but in a very short order, you and your wife both come to the realization that this whole scenario probably does not end without y'all going to prison. Both of you. Yes. And so so again, because we're weaving in a bunch of different dates and things like that. And then on the 14th, we've got, you know, Dale, the local that's willing to put up the assets. And so let's go over those next couple of days where okay, Ruben's there. But then you hear about Michael Grimm. You realize his predicament and how it's directly tied to your predicament and how it just doesn't look good. But then we're working our way towards getting those assets in place so that we could even be out, so that we can even coordinate a response to this. Let's just pick it up from there. Yeah, you know, that Michael Grimm phone call as as much it as it was as much of it as I'm sorry. Um as much as that Michael Grimm phone call was a clear sign to us that God was working and was like clearly present. It was also very gut-wrenching because because at that time we learn this is no bribery like bribery scheme. This we are now political hostages. Because Michael Grimm basically went through the same How how long before y'all did he experience this? >> Yeah, so he was August of '23 whenever he was arrested. Um he ended up serving a 6-month prison sentence. He had been home, I believe, 2 and 1/2 weeks from his prison prison sentence. How did y'all get connected with him? Crazy circumstances. >> Yeah, so my father-in-law, who lives in Fort Worth, had sent out a prayer request to our family in Fort Worth asking explaining the situation and asking for prayer. The Valerie's cousin was training to be a firefighter in Fort Worth, Texas. His training had actually gotten moved that day. So, he's in a you know, strange fire station doing his training for the day. He gets done, takes his gear off, pulls his phone out of his pocket, and looks down and sees this message explaining our situation. And and he starts to read aloud and and and stops and has this audible moment and says, "I can't believe this. My cousin and her husband have just been arrested in Turks and in Caicos." And the guy, who he's never met before, standing behind him says, "Are you Are you joking with me? Like what What are you What are you trying to get out of this?" And Ash, Valerie's cousin, turns and says, "Why would I Why would I joke?" And he's like, "Man, I'm from Indiana. My best friend is a guy named Michael Grimm who was arrested for the exact same thing. And he just got out of prison. Let me put you guys in touch." So, this is a fire station that he's not even truly supposed to be at. >> in our community in a completely different state. in Fort Texas where a guy from Indiana just happens to be who is also best friends with the only American who's who's ever been sentenced to prison for this very thing. And was uh Not only that, Michael Grimm kind of tipped the cards uh for that government and allowed them to see, "Okay, this is what our This They saw an outcry from their their constituents. This is what our This is what our voting public wants is to be seen as being tough on Americans." And so, they respond by making it a 12-year minimum mandatory prison sentence uh for this very act. And so, we we um you know, as that as that call goes on, it it was daunting, man, because we hear about the prison conditions, which it's a third-world country. There's no There's no windows. It's open air. Uh no electricity, no running water. Um constant threats of violence. Um you know, obviously, you're not you're not eating three square meals a day. And it isn't American prison. And so, we hear about those conditions. Um we hear about what we're now facing, right? This is This isn't us against some um you know, corrupt police force. This is us versus a government. Um And then uh Uh, we start to ask, you know, what are our options? Like, do you have any advice? And his only advice to me was, "Unless you're willing to go get on a boat tonight and and roll the dice and and take a huge gamble, your only option is to go jump on the grenade, take full credit, tell them that Valerie had no knowledge of this, and you go to and you see if you can get her off this island and you go to prison for 12 years." And as you know, I I think it probably should have hit me harder hearing that, but that seemed so simple to do, right? Like it was I was like, "Absolutely, I'm going to do that, right? Like I'm if me going to prison over Valerie, like no question in my mind." Um, and so you I make that decision and I kind of immediately feel my heart just kind of harden up a little bit. Um, then you start thinking about your kids and start thinking about the things that you potentially might miss out on and you start planning out all the Christmases and everything else that's going to take place in the next 12 years, all the life events, and then refusal of acceptance starts to kick in and it's, "Okay, let's find a different way." Um, we asked about going to the media. He explicitly said, "Do not. Like you that is a death sentence." Um, he had multiple murder attempts on his life um while he was in prison, his family was extorted. Um, he he he said, "I promise you you're going to be the only white American in this prison or the only white guy and the only American in this prison system. And to them that's going to equate to two things is that you have or that you have money and that you have people at home that care about you and are willing to do anything that'll get you out. And so they're going going use that. Now, if you try and go after their number one source of income, their 90% of their GDP is American tourism, they are going to they're going to kill you. And so, as much as like that threat was ringing in my ears, I just felt like we had this little like like tug, this little pull from God, and about that time Val's uh phone dings, and it was a this girl who married a guy I grew up with in Shawnee, Oklahoma. She ended up being becoming the head anchor of NBC Boston, and she said, "Hey, I've heard of your situation. We are praying for you emphatically. Like, if there's anything I can do beyond prayer, and if you think getting your story out there um would help in any way, let me know." And I And as we are trying to weigh all this, I as I told Val, I said, "I I think God has given us as clear of a sign as he can that we need to fight this." Well, and even like even before you got in touch with NBC Boston, you had a very poignant and interesting moment. This would have been the day before, this would have been on April the 14th, where you run into a local or you know, run into you were introduced to a local named Dale. Mhm. And y'all had a very interesting interaction in terms of him putting up assets and all that. And so, it it it's a it's a quick interaction, but I I wanted you to to talk about that. >> Okay. >> And then then we'll get back into the to the the media side of things. Yeah, so this So, Dale, um which got to be honest, I I protected his his identity there. Yeah. >> he's Dale for the story. So, he was a friend of a friend, and we he was a restaurant owner there on the island. Um we go to his restaurant to meet with him. He sits and when we sit down with him, I can tell he is completely undecided on whether or not he's truly going to help us. And so thank him you know over and over again for you know even considering sitting down with us. But I I can't yet because of his demeanor, I can't yet determine like what like why did this guy even agree to sit down with us cuz he looked a little upset about even taking the meeting. And so as the conversation plays out he ends up sharing with us that he himself had been um basically in a bar fight on the island um turn turns out that the people that he'd been in a bar fight with were um off-duty police officers. They had ganged up on him. He reaches in his waistband to pull out a knife to you know back him back the threat off and as he does so they all draw weapons. They end up arresting him. And off-duty police officer arresting this guy and he ends up getting charged with impersonation of a firearm. And he says this and I'm like is that even a real charge? Like this is like how is this So he ends up fighting this legal battle over quote unquote impersonating a a firearm and their their statement was the way in which he drew his knife was resembled as if he was drawing a firearm. And so crazy story but we start to understand that we've got this in common and um you know we we um you know kind of just plead with them that we are good people that we have nothing um that we're not going to run. We're not going to I'm not willing to put his businesses at jeopardy cuz he's going to have to put up the title to his restaurant because they had set my bail um, that was unobtainable for you know, Reuben at that point and so we needed a larger asset and that was going to be one of his restaurants and he ends up agreeing um, to put up the bail to or put up the title to his restaurant for our bail. Just You know, an astonishing story again guys, put yourself in Dale's shoes. Yeah. And what would it have to take? What movement of God in your heart would have to take for you to do something seemingly so stupid, right? And so like disconnected from reality. And so that's that's on April 14th. Now we get to April 15th like you've been connected with NBC Boston anchor named Melody Mendez. This is after y'all had kind of gotten some hints that the United States Embassy assigned to that island was not going to be very helpful. We'll get more into that a little bit later. Uh, you know, your mom is on the island at this point. She's helping you get connected with Melody Mendez and she realizes okay, this is kind of outside of her scope of what she does as an anchor or as a journalist but there's an investigative reporter named Leslie Gatos who would be more appropriate person to connect you with. But at at some point this is before you know, this is a few a couple of days before you even connect with Leslie Gatos to do an interview. You and your wife Valerie have to come to this realization like hey, are we willing to go to war economically speaking with the island of Turks and Caicos? Are we we willing to go against what Michael Grimm has said in terms of hey, that this is like this is a death sentence for the both of you. This is suicide. You can't bring the media into this. And so but you get introduced to an anchor. The anchor wants to get you with an investigative journalist but at any point y'all can pull the plug on the entire thing and say, you know what? Actually, we don't want to go this route but y'all came to the decision decision basically like no, we're going to war and we're we're going to like if we're going out, we're going out on our backs. And you know, that kind or they're going to put us on our backs would be a better way of saying it. How do you even come to that decision? Because again, all you're facing plenty of headwinds even going that route. Even though a lot of people be like, hey, if you have media contacts, use them. Maybe they can help. But Michael Grimm's like, no, you can't do it. So how do you even come to that decision? Man, I I think at the end of the day I need I I maybe I I guess potentially grown up fighting and willing to take adversity head on, you know, um I um I just wasn't willing to forego the next 12 years or potentially the rest of my life without seeing my children. Yeah. And to me, if there was meat on the bone, I was going after it. And it was one of those things. Now, the hard part the hard part was is how do I not drag my wife into this fight that I'm willing to take on? Right. And I had researched what an embargo was. I wasn't privy to any of this information. And so I had um shared with Valerie and Brian Haggerty, so gentleman from Pennsylvania that was caught in the same situation. Uh I shared with them both, "Hey, I think um that if we embargo this story that you know, we can go ahead and pre-record these interviews before I end up behind bars. And you know, if we were able to get Valerie off this island, um once she's on a plane, she can lift the embargo. That gets her off the island and out of harm's way if this does go if this does go sideways. And uh so we we end up with this plan that we are going to pre-record interviews but embargo the story. Um and that was that was the only protection at that point that I could truly provide Valerie. Um and that was at that point it became pretty clear what what I needed to do. >> only decision you could make. >> Only decision I could make. >> even what you said earlier Ryan about the decision to be like, "Hey, uh 12 years in prison, but your wife gets to go home to your babies." I don't I don't think any of the guys in this 95% male audience would like quibble with that. That that's it's If you're going to love your wife as Christ loved the church, that is a sacrificial kind of love, that's exactly what this scenario is to where it's just like yeah, I mean, 12 years in prison just standing alone by itself is incredibly daunting, but it's like given the circumstances, it's like, "Well, this is the only clear directive." And so, you make this decision, you're going to talk to the media, and when you embargo stuff guys basically the journalists are not going to go outside of this so that they can break the story because it could break the entirety of what they're even covering, right? It could It could break the legalities of what they're doing. But you you find out a day later, this is April 16th, that there's a man named Brian, which is another man on the island of Turks and Caicos. He's there at that exact moment, and he's just a little bit farther ahead in this exact same process as you. So, you've been connected with Michael Grimm, he's already gone through his process. His process caused them to change their standards on the island, and Brian was one of the first, if not the first American after Michael Grimm, to get caught up in the same scenario. And so, what were the circumstance of being connected with Brian? Yeah, you know, when I told Michael, "Hey, I'm going to the media. This is what we've decided upon." He was He told me, "Hey, pump the brakes. You're not just making this decision for yourself. You're actually going to start affecting somebody else's life." There's a guy named Brian Hagerich. To your point, he was a a bit ahead of me and and the legal process of which basically was just a a slow march to prison is all this legal process was at this point. And so he says, "I want I I you're going to have to talk with Brian before any of this goes out." So he puts me in touch with Brian. Uh I called Ruben. Ruben took me to go pick up Brian. Um Brian was actually living in a very very rough part of the island. Um the island is extremely expensive, especially when you're talking about 70 to 100 days on this place. And so he had in order to save money, he'd moved to um what they call the Five Key area of this island. And if if you pull up the the newspaper, which highest murder rate in all of the Caribbean, most of those murders took place over in Five Key. And so Brian was in a rough part of town. You know, I'll never forget Ruben we're driving in the car. Ruben looks at me and he's like, "You have friends in Five Key?" Mhm. And I was like, "Ah, it's a it's a family friend." And at the time I couldn't even let Ruben know that we were, you know, conspiring to go to the media. And I said, "It's a family friend. He he's here for work. I guess his his company was just looking to save money for long-term housing." And um so next thing you know, Brian comes out. I immediately recognize Brian, which is crazy because the day before we had been uh required to check back into a police station. And as we're standing in this line amongst all these locals that are paying cash to report their their traffic accidents. And you're you're literally watching all this like corruption unfold in front of you. Uh I see this 6-ft 5 pale white guy walk through and I'm like, "I think that's him." Like you However, no there was no coverage of his arrest whatsoever to be found, right? Like no public record of it. So, it was all based upon assumption. Um and I was like, "I mean, I think that's him." Val was, you know, she was not in a good place to play like what if games or wouldn't that be funny if or should we go talk to him? She just wanted to keep her head down and and get everything over with. And uh so anyways, whenever he walks out of this apartment that we go to pick him up from, I'm like, "That was you at the jail yesterday." And he was like, "Man, I thought that was you guys as well." So, I tell him quickly like, "Hey, like no mention of this in front of Ruben. No like don't mention that you are an American that's been arrested for this. Like he thinks that you're an old family friend." We bring him over to the house that we were renting. It was a little VRBO. Um and we I cook him dinner. Um after dinner's over, I you can tell like he's just waiting for us to say some pitch him on something. He you can tell whenever I'm in sales and everybody's like anticipating what's the catch, what's the sell. And um once we finish, uh we we sit down and we say "Hey look we we've decided that we want to go to the media." And his immediate response was, "No, man. Like that I've been told this is a death sentence. Um I'm not willing to do that." Uh he had a number of conversations up to that point in terms of what it would look like to to flee the island. Um none of those really seemed to have any legitimacy to them. Um and so as and I was willing to talk about every angle um with them cuz at that time Michael was right. That was a decision that was going to impact all three of us. Not just me, not just Valerie, and not just Brian. Like any decision that we were going to make from that point forward was 100% going to affect all three of us. And so I needed to hear him out and I asked that he hear us out about this media piece and you know, I've been in sales my entire career. Thought I was a pretty handy salesman. Um, I couldn't get it done to be honest with you. I couldn't convince him to do this. Yeah. >> And it was it was Valerie who ended up doing it and she said, Brian, I want you to take a minute and I want you to think right now with the world that we live in our two like middle class white guys from kind of middle America. Are they going to draw more sympathy than a school teacher? So who is a mom, who you know, you know, is Who's going to Who's going to garner more attention? And he stopped and he thought about it and she was right, man. Like Unfortunately, we weren't that big of a headline, right? You know. >> Yep. Uh If you involved her, we knew that >> Beautiful young elementary school teacher, beautiful kids, beautiful family, like, you know, it is a completely different scenario. >> Right. And so he that's whenever he started to consider consider it as an option. Um That's when we explained the embargo piece and that, hey, we can tell this story while she's still here on the island. She'll release it as soon as she gets on a plane. And he finally, I mean, it was probably 2:00 in the morning when he agrees to go to go forward with this plan and uh But yeah. When the plan So, the plan's really set in motion before that. You do this and kind of get some confirmation on the plan and then the next day y'all actually do a sit-down interview, you know, digitally with Leslie Gattis. And I want to read a very interesting quote from the book. And so here's the quote. Uh because this is the moment y'all realize, okay, we can trust her." Because at this point you don't know if you can trust Reuben. Uh you certainly can't trust any any uh locals. Yeah, you just don't really know your predicament that you're in, but uh you say this, "I glance at the screen and notice that Leslie is also crying. Tears stream down her face as she listens to Valerie. She's not even trying to hide it. She's a mother, too, and it's clear she's showing empathy that only another mother could. Any skepticism I had about speaking with Leslie immediately fades. I know from that moment that she's in our corner. This isn't just a story to her. These are real lives, real children waiting for their parents." And you know, a few days after this, uh on the 21st of April, y'all do an interview with uh Chris Van Cleave of CBS News. So, we're going from local regional NBC Boston. Now, we're we're going uh to the national news, and so this is starting to grow. But even going back to a comment uh on April the 20th, you know, you and Valerie are on the island. You don't know if you're going to get out, but you need to connect with your kids. Kids need to see Mommy and Daddy. You're trying to protect them uh while the same time, you know, y'all have a natural as- uh aversion to lying as Christians. But it's like, how much can you express and reveal to a child that they would actually understand why Mommy and Daddy aren't there at this moment? Um you know, obviously you and your wife Valerie, if you know, your faith uh in in Jesus is incredibly important. But even just just go back to those those days, you know, the 19th, the 20th, the 21st. Yeah, you're doing the media thing, you're doing all the things that you can do to to uh adjust, control, and get out the narrative at the appropriate time. But also you're trying to protect the hearts of your children. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um It was It was extremely challenging, you know because all the fear, all the doubt that we felt um had to completely disappear, and we had to put on a face anytime that we spoke to the to our kids. We had to tell them we ended up telling them that there was just a storm that was keeping us on the island and so we would It was a storm. >> It was proverbial storm, right? So we you know we had to keep up this lie so that it was not going to scare them but it was tormenting. To to lie to your children for them to ask for potential dates of when you might come home and what you know, what's the news report showing? Like when when is the storm going to pass? And Valerie is she's not wired to lie, you know, bless her heart. I mean, and not that I'm wired to lie, but it just think that you when a survival instinct you you people are willing to do or or capable of doing some things, but I I took most of those questions head on and I was just like, look guys, like our goal is to get Mommy and Daddy love you. Our goal is to get home to you guys, but we would hang up the phone and we would weep like children for having, you know, spent and concocting this story and spent the last, you know, 30 minutes on the phone with the children telling them that everything was okay um knowing at some point they were going to know the truth. Yep. And you know, we could only pray that they would know the truth from us and not from the media and the headlines that were about to come out. >> That's a hard thing because you can protect your kids in your house for the most part, but then you can't protect them at school. Who knows about this story? Does some kid just, you know, scream out something cuz they're mad at your kid for taking a block or, you know, taking a pencil off their desk and then it's like, well, he's my dad's not in prison. And then it's like, wait a minute, what's what's going on here? But then, you know, all this kind of gets uh to a head, and this is on April the 22nd. So, I'm going to read a quote uh from the book. This is, you know, an official of the island talking to you. "Mr. Watson, you are being charged with possession of ammunition. This is an offense that carries a minimum mandatory custodial sentence of 12 years. You will be taken into custody today." She pauses, looking at me over the paper. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you may say may be held against you." So, at this point, the decision had already been made to maintain that the bag was yours and yours alone, that it may have had some of Valerie's things in it, but it was not her bag, that it was your bag. And you are put in shackles. And you are removed from that facility, and then you are marched into a prison cell. But then you are informed, this is, you know, part of the goal, but you are informed that Valerie is going to be able to uh be allowed to return to Oklahoma. Yeah. And that, you know, in a macabre way, this is your plan going into force. You had done what was necessary to get Valerie off that island, back to Oklahoma, and back to your children. But now there's the reality of you being marched to your cell in a third-world country, as you've already kind of explained the conditions. But what you didn't say earlier, I mean, you have uh previous people that had used that cell, that would use their own fecal matter to write messages, uh to tag. This is not a a san- sanitary environment. And so, there, you know, you can only imagine what the floors would be like, the bedding situation, um you know, the really just you're living in ref- human refuse at that point. Uh I mean, you were allowed uh to have your Bible with you in your jail cell, but then, you know, when the prison doors are closed and things are locked down, I mean, this is not a well-lit area. There were times when the the prison guards even saw you trying to use a little bit of light from down the hallway to read your Bible, and then just to spite you they would slam the door. I'm I'm kind of getting my head of myself a little bit. We kind of need to go back to the realization that kind of what you feared but were expecting was that you were going to be charged with this and you're going to be put in prison, but now you're in chains. You're in shackles and you're heading off to a prison cell. Yeah, I this probably should have been the lowest point, but I can't tell you like how much of a weight was lifted off of my heart knowing that Valerie was going home. And I felt like I was at least able to do this as a husband and a father, right? As as And so that failure that I initially had felt, right? I knew that at this point um Valerie's life wasn't going to be collateral damage in in in that mistake. And so I I felt 100% relief. I was at peace um just for the most part, right? Um there was still that piece of me that wondered what I was going to miss out on in the next 12 years, but overwhelmingly I was at peace just knowing that she was going home to our kids. So And so But but now do you have the reality of prison? Mhm. And so you're in there for the first time. Obviously anytime you're in an environment of any kind for the first time your body's trying to get used to the sights, the sounds, the smells, all all the things your senses are going wild. At some point the the realization has to set in this might be my condition. These might be my conditions rather for the next 12 years minimum. Yeah. And so when and how does that realization kind of land on you where it's like, okay I did my duty as a as a sacrificing husband, but now here I am. Yeah. It probably took the you know, waking up for the first time, you know, not that I got much sleep, but if I would doze off, you know, if if and when I did doze off, you open your eyes and realizing you're you fell asleep and now you've woken up in that situation. That is that's when it becomes reality is this you close your eyes and when when you open them again, the situation hasn't changed. It's remained the same. And you know, it was the constantly being called prisoner Watson as opposed to just Watson or my name, right? Like and being treated like a prisoner, being treated like somebody that had done something egregiously wrong was something that I was just going to have to I there was it was pointless to try and defend myself for my honor or my character. Um it was I was prescribed a >> [laughter] >> I was prescribed a title and you know, of prisoner and that was that was all that mattered at that point. And so yeah, it it is it's one of those things where you start to realize that your time is is insignificant. And now it's just a matter of survival. And it's okay, what do I got to do to survive this day? And and how can I not just be tick marking days off of you know, scratches on the wall, right? It's how do I how do I further myself in this situation? And for me it was it was reading the Bible as much as I could, right? And and doing push-ups on a fecal ridden floor till I could, you know, till I'd fall on my face. And it was if if nothing else, I'm going to come out of this situation more well-versed in the Bible, and I'm going to look like something you'd see out of the movies. >> [laughter] >> Um but but yeah, so that was that was just kind of my slow acceptance of this is my situation and and I've got to make the most of it. Yeah, and I think most people what's like in any set of circumstances you get busy living or you get busy dying. And at some point if you tap out on life, you know, you're basically staring down the Grim Reaper pretty quickly. Um now you you do get bailed from prison. You immediately start your media blitz. And as I mentioned earlier, and you know, we kind of skip around on the timeline just a little bit, you at some point have to decide that you're not only going to go to war in the economic and media sphere against the island Turk- Turks and Caicos. You're actually going to go to war with the Biden uh US State Department. Yeah. Because you realize that the United States Embassy under the Biden administration is doing y'all no favors and intends to do I say y'all, you and Brian no favors like whatsoever. Um and this kind of crescendos with the meeting that y'all had with someone named Karen. It's like, okay, this is almost too on the nose that represents the United States Embassy. Mhm. This person is supposed to be the tip of the spear Yeah. as it pertains to caring for Americans in other countries. It's kind of the whole point of having a United States Embassy located anywhere in the world to begin with. >> Right. So at what point, I mean cuz you had to be hopeful. Like oh, the Embassy like somebody's looking out for us. Like, you know, we're going to do what we can on the media side and we're going to do what we can with the governor and the senator and all that. But hey, the the United States government, the Embassy's got to have our backs, right? >> Yeah. Yeah, you know, that was you we started to realize pretty quickly after Michael Graham had shared with us an email that was sent to his mother who had sent this desperate plea. She there I mean there's no contact with on the inside. You get two five-minute phone calls a month um once you're in prison. And so his mother is in desperation trying to make sure one that he's alive. She had sent some care packages and wanted to see that he had received his medication and and so and so forth. And she had received an email or response from lady named Usha Pitts who was at the time the acting charged affair which is like basically an interim ambassador of that embassy and Usha basically lack of a better word I'm paraphrasing now says this is not my problem and and kick rocks like get lost stop emailing me immediately. And I mean the tone of the email says it all, right? And that was it was clear to us that we had no ally from the embassy in this. And it was it was hard to to really help other people. Even Mark Wayne I think was a reluctant to want to believe that the embassy was potentially acting in you know acting against us in some way and pushing against us. They were um you know this Karen lady makes it very very clear that she's not happy with us for having gone to the media. She she tells us that we just needed to jump on a boat and get the heck out of her life and make her life easier that we needed to shut up and maybe read >> bureaucrat, right? Doesn't want to be bothered. Read the comment section. And it was very clear when she told me to read the comment section that she sided with all the the you know, the young left-wing kids that are sitting in their mom's basement that said I deserve the death penalty for even owning a gun. Um and she said it with a with a smile on her face that basically told me everything I needed to know about where she stood and how she thought. >> Here's the thing. It's one thing to make a fair critique cuz even while this was going on, I said as unfortunate as this is, it is his bag, it is his ammunition. Like he's not saying it wasn't. He's not saying that you know, it was put there by some nefarious nameless force like maybe the Jews put it in there or something [laughter] like that. He's not saying any of that. But at the same time, even if it's a whoopsies or you were just an ignorant fool, you're still an American citizen on foreign soil that is being railroaded and you should have advocates, right? You should have people that are advocating for your release. And here's the thing, also at the same time advocating for a punishment that is even relative to the crime. And so it's like no one would be like, hey, she he should get off scot-free, whatever. It's like, yeah, you know what? He should probably pay a fine. Maybe he has to write a you know, an I'm sorry email that is going to be read into the whatever congressional record of Turks and Caicos. But at the end of the day, 12 years in prison is absolute nonsense. And so you realize the embassy is not going to be of any help. The Biden administration as a whole is not going to be of any help. But on April the 24th, you actually have your first connection with Senator Um you kind of realize that you guys just have generally a lot in common. You kind of speak each other's language. And you realize even a little bit thereafter, this is getting into May now. So May the 10th, you hear that Markwayne Mullin is trying to get uh I believe it's just pronounced a a codel or a coddle. So that's c o d e l. This is a congressional delegation task force that they wanted to come to the island. They wanted to do what they could to advocate directly with Turks and Caicos and potentially even with the UK who technically owns the island of Turks and Caicos. Um, even fast forwarding a little bit, uh, you know, y'all are hopeful about that. You're still doing your media bullet stuff, uh, you and Brian. Even on the But then on the 16th of May, you hear that the Senate Majority Leader at the time, Chuck Schumer from New York, he's trying to make everyone's life difficult. This can't just be a bunch of Republicans going down there. This has to be a a bipartisan task force for some reason that he can't explain. Uh, but then you get John Fetterman involved because Brian is from Pennsylvania. >> Yeah. John Fetterman is maybe the only reasonable Democrat left in Congress, perhaps. Um, and, you know, he he's got to be brought into the fold and kind of at the 11th hour y'all realize, "Hey, John Fetterman is agreeing to be a part of this, uh, codel. They're going to come down to the island." And then we have May the 19th. Okay, on May the 19th, the codel led by Mark Wayne Mullen and with, uh, John Fetterman in tow, they actually come to the island. Um, so let's talk about what that meeting is like. So, who all's in the room? What is the the tone of the meeting? And also there's a very interesting thing because it wasn't just you and Brian. At this point there was, uh, a lady named Sharita who was caught up in all of this. And it it was almost as if, um, no one's happy about being there. They they want to get to a solution. But then there was still some reluctance until they were informed about the conditions that Sharita was was in while on the island. So, so let's let's talk about the codel and and everything they're in. Yeah, man. I mean, watching that plane, which it's crazy how much of this story just continues to circle back upon itself because the restaurant that that was put up as surety for my bail happens to overlook the airport. So, we go to the restaurant, um, and we sit on the patio, and we we watch this military air uh airplane, this giant US air airplane land on this little bitty island's airport. And, you know, I can still remember like the feeling of that plane touching down and how it shook the entire island. I could hear the glassware clanking behind me, you know. And, it was that moment of calvary's here, I'm going home. >> That's right. And, so, you know, you're immediately in this entire time, right? I mean, the entire 70 days I've got these highs and highs and then immediately the rug gets pulled out from underneath me and I hit and then crash and get the lowest of lows, right? And so, this, I think, well, there's nothing that can go wrong here. This is the American government that has shown up on our behalf, like we're going home. And, we have a what the the Codell had had put together was like what they called the AMSET dinner. So, it was myself, uh Brian Hegerich, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Tyler Winrick, who was from Virginia, also arrested on the same charges, and then Sharita Greer from Florida. >> Florida, yep. Um, so, they have an AMSET dinner so that they can better understand like who we are, what the circumstance what the circumstances have been, and kind of what we're up against. So, um, when they go meet with the government the following day, they can have all their story uh together. And, yeah, the I mean, as we go throughout that dinner and each one of us stands up and gives our account of what we'd experienced up until that point, it was lie after lie that that the US Embassy kept getting caught in. And, the one that really tipped the scales was uh Sharita Greer um was ended up being handcuffed to a chair. >> And, she's how old? Like, she's in her >> to 50. Uh she's an African-American grandmother out of Florida that you know, and was handcuffed to a chair for 4 days. Mind you, she has a bad history of blood clots, so DVT. >> sitting is like the worst case scenario for somebody with lower extremity blood blood clots. >> Especially whenever you have something constricting your distal extremity, right? So, she's handcuffed by her ankle to a chair. Um we my mother, you know, we through local contacts that we had made and people that were paid off, we kind of found out what where she was when we went and found her. And my mother came out and was in tears um about her condition. And so, she immediately started sending emails to the the embassy um saying, "There needs to be intervention. One, there is inhumane conditions that are being done. And two, uh which is an another huge uh responsibility of the embassy is she was with held medication. Um and that's at least one thing they could have done. And so, she was handcuffed to that chair and she remained handcuffed to the chair. The embassy did not respond. Um we finally got her released 4 days later. So, she ended up staying handcuffed to that chair for 4 days without any response or intervention from the embassy. And when she got up and shared that piece of her testimony, and they saw her trembling recounting that that those 4 days, I the room shifted, right? Like everybody realized this how serious this has just gotten. One, but the the UK's Minister of Foreign Affairs or or the pardon me, it was the UK's um uh the US Ambassador of the United Kingdom. Uh You you could see the the color in his face immediately vanished because he realized this is an immediate PR nightmare. Right? Like this is crazy. >> Woman of color, grandmother, like just the visual of any human being being shackled to a chair. >> Yes. Like just insanity. Yeah. So, they realized pretty quickly one the embassy has failed. Um two, they've now been exposed not only for failing to do their job, but lying and uh decei- and sending out deceiving information or that um would basically painted a different picture. Uh had claimed that they had toured the prison which ended up being false. They claimed that there was no record of any other non-American citizens uh having um been arrested and then released because they weren't American. That ended up being false and they ended up having evidence of two other cases where non-American citizens were arrested during the same tenure were arrested and then immediately released cuz they were not American citizens. And so, we had proof that it they were targeting Americans, they were mistreating Americans, and that this was all very politically motivated. And I think at that point in time that's when Mark Wayne really understood. And he was like, "Okay." I I and fair enough. I don't blame him for thinking that I was you know, nearing crazy town. Whenever I would call him and tell him, you know, these uh what the situation was was how it was unfolding and and all these different like nooks and crannies of the story. I don't blame him. I I I could I I completely understand why he would come into that with some some bit of skepticism, right? Like >> yeah. There's [clears throat] just you you have to have a healthy skepticism in that moment that hopefully doesn't cross over into cynicism where you couldn't possibly have your position swayed, but it's like okay. How much is this guy just elevating what this sounds like to to get me riled up to to make me say something in public that I now have to defend and stand on? And you mentioned the whole UK connection because a couple of days later, so again here they are on the 19th of May, you think hey we're getting out of here. Well, that's that's not what's happening. Well, Mark Wayne doesn't just you know have this initial uh headwind from Turks and Caicos and think well hey we we did our best we came down in a big fancy airplane and it just didn't quite work out. He basically goes to the UK and says hey y'all really enjoy the United States Coast Guard's protection of this entire area, don't you? Man, it would be a shame if we no longer uh we're able to do that for y'all. >> Yeah. And so it's a strong-arm tactic to be like you are living off of the downstream fruits of the largess of the United States taxpayer and the United States military. Do you really want that protection to be removed? >> Yeah. Because do you want to send your ships, what's left of your fleet? Do you want to really send that down here to the Caribbean? Is that what really needs to happen here? And so one thing we're we're all getting into. So you have the the cold open doing its thing. We still have got the media blitz. But all the while Brian's timeline is before your timeline, right? >> And what happens to Brian is going to really be, you know, a a clarion call to the rest of the situation really understanding what's going to happen to you, what's going to happen to Tyler, what's going to happen to Sherida. And so May 24th, this is where Brian has his sentencing hearing. This is where we find out exactly what's going to happen, which is at the most basic you know, standard is going to be tangentially related to what's going to happen to you. Before we even before we get in there. Yeah. What's the feeling like? What does Brian feel? What do you feel? What do y'all feel like his chances are? Do you get any hints as to what the the forthcoming, you know, a verdict is going to be? Uh where we at? Mark Wayne's temperature of the UK's involvement started to improve, right? And that was giving us some bit of hope that hey, if the UK can stay involved, then they're going to hold the island accountable and the count of and the island seemed almost like they were trying to make a stance now that they had been put on the world stage. They they almost wanted to to make a stance that they were a big boy country and that they weren't going to back down uh to what, you know, they considered these um you know, the these uh threat uh economic threat by the media. And but with the UK's involvement, we we started to gather a little bit of hope. Um the night before, however, one of the judges on the island had just sentenced a Haitian man to 16 years in prison for possession of firearms and ammunition, which it's technically the same charge, right? So >> in reality, completely different. the scenarios are different. The guy was involved in a crime, you know, and so however, this was one of the first sentencings that had happened since they had ratcheted up this this new mandatory minimum sentencing. And so we thought, oh goodness gracious, they've just now done the you know, uh uh applied the sentence. Are they going to try and double down and make it, you know, seem as if they are not um showing any favor to the Americans, right? Like >> [sighs and gasps] >> And so it it was pretty nerve-racking because you've got some signs of hope, but then you start getting these other little signs that if you picked up any newspaper from the island during that point in time, it was 1,000% we were going to prison for 12 years and we just needed to shut the hell up and and go and they were tired of us. And so the newspapers um the you know, the locals hearing about them talk about it if you if you you know, my mom unfortunately would read quite a few comments on social media and you know, everything was was quite damning that we were going to end up still in prison for 12 years despite our best efforts. So it it small bits of hope, but other than that, we thought we were going to prison for 12 years. So Hey guys, real quick. You may have noticed a lot of companies out there that are advertising and marketing that they're American companies, but guess what guys? 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So Ryan, I even want to back up just a little bit before we get to Brian's sentencing hearing because you had mentioned earlier in our discussion about how hey, if y'all were to go to the media, it's suicide, but they they didn't mean that figuratively. They meant that literally because it's like there's going to be an incentive on this incredibly violent island to take y'all out, right? And you actually had a circumstance in early May where you felt like there was an actual attempt or at least testing the waters of an attempt on your life. So so take us through that because you and Brian like this this idea that y'all were just like sitting on the beach drinking you know, mai tais [clears throat] or you know, and enjoying you know, your time and just kind of relaxing waiting on the US government swoop in and save you. That wasn't it, right? I mean this was a situation where if your head's not on a swivel like this could have it could be curtains for you too and you kind of had a very up close and personal experience with that. >> Yeah, yeah. We we were public enemies number one and two, right? And we stuck out like sore thumbs on this island. And and you know, anytime we went to a grocery store, you could hear the whispers and point and see the finger pointing and um it really started coming to a head May 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th. There was a series of bomb threats that kept coming into the airport. Some person out there, I don't know who it was, but someone in the world started calling in bomb threats to the Howard Hamilton Airport there on the island. Um ended up shutting down that airport 17 times from bomb threats. Unfortunately for us, every time they called in a bomb threat they listed my name in the threat. Until you release Ryan Watson or until you release Brian Hagerich. And so then the local media, the newspaper and um and then and then the the government as well started nodding their head along with saying, yeah, it's it's being constructed All this is being constructed by Ryan Watson and Brian Hagerich. Like y'all are orchestrating this evil cabal of doers on the internet that are like, hey, we're going to keep calling Yeah. >> And so you know, at first, I'll be honest. I mean if I'm being completely honest, laying my heart on the table here, the first bomb threat I'm kind of like, I get what you deserve, you know? Like it's it was a threat. It was there was no actually no violence, right? So it's kind of like and it and it seemed as if these were like nobody was going to truly act upon any of this. And so at first you kind of like chuckle a little bit to yourself and you think, ah, well, mess around. Well, then they continued and they got more and more descriptive about the bombs and tail numbers and then they then they started naming uh the locations of of different schools. And that's when we're like, hey, time out. Yeah, that's Like you can't do this. This is And so we we put out a press release, Brian and I do, condemning these threats of of of violence. And everybody, you know, all the media outlets across the world ran our press statement condemning these threats. The island would not do it. The island refused to do it. And it to us it was pretty clear that they wanted us to be hated. They wanted us to be attached to that. And so they refused to run our press release statements. Well, then we started getting messages from Reuben, the driver who had put up his car, saying, "Hey, you guys need to watch out. Like you you're you know, you need to be really be on on the lookout because on WhatsApp, which is how all the island communicated with one another, on WhatsApp on these threads, there were people responding to these these bombing these bomb threats saying that you guys are in charge and that somebody needs to step up and do something about it. And they're starting to put a target on your back. You It doesn't seem like real life, right? You know, like you're just like well, surely that's not going to be the case. Um however, I believe it was May 10th, I was running to check in. Part of my condition my bail conditions was I had to go check into the jail every day, sign a college ruled notebook paper Mhm. with you know, dated. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> And sign this notebook [clears throat] paper to show that I was still on the island. Well, I had kind of had this little route that I would typically run. I'd throw my AirPods in and I'm running on a sidewalk and just minding my own business, jamming music, just trying to get an escape from my reality at the moment. And next thing you know, I see a flash out the corner of my right eye and just instinctively dive to the left. As I'm diving, I I feel something catch my foot or my heel and it spins me in the air. I land looking spins me 180 degrees so I land looking the opposite direction that I was running. And realize that was a car that has just now hit me, right? Fortunately for me the curb was high enough and it kept this little sedan from coming completely over the curb and and and taking me out. And initially you think, okay, that had to have been somebody that was distracted or not paying attention. Well, the next thing you know, I look up and I see the reverse lights shift into gear and I hear the engine rev and it it's coming back at a, you know, high rate of speed. This isn't somebody turning around to check on me. And you I I have this moment of do I flee? Do I run? I realize pretty quickly I have nowhere to go. The fence next to me is not scalable and so I, like an idiot, step out into the street as if I'm going to fight a moving car. >> [laughter] >> You don't think very clearly when this type of stuff happens. So I step back out onto the street off the curb that has just now protected my life and then next thing you know, I hear the the brakes slam and then car get thrown back into gear and it takes off the opposite direction. And I'm what in the world just happened? I look over my shoulder and realize that another car has pulled out onto the street and that's probably what warded them off and and and got them to leave. Um but yeah, at that point it was, okay, this is serious. People are truly gunning for us and we have to be very, very careful. We already felt like we were living in hiding, you know, in a large sense, but but this was kind of our first like real brush with a serious threat and it was like, okay, we have to take this serious from now on. So And so a couple of weeks goes by there's all this anticipation for May the 24th where we get we finally get to Brian's sentencing. Can't imagine what was going through his mind. Obviously, you're directly attached to what's what's going on. And then we get his actual sentencing. So, he was given a 52-week, a 1-year suspended sentence and a fine of $6,700. Mhm. And then he was going to be free to go. They were going to give him his passport back. He was going to be free to go. I mean, the elation that he had to feel John Fetterman, Mark Wayne Mullen, the people that were involved in this, the elation they had to feel. There's the release of emotion from the people of Turks and Caicos which again are not fans of Americans. And just as a quick aside, part of that is because Americans feel like the rest of the world is their freaking sandbox and they can just go over to someone else's country and just like, you know, sit there and you know, take a [inaudible] in the sandbox and everybody is just going to have to take it. So, when y'all are going all the over the place overseas, can you act Can you act right? Can you act [laughter] as if your grandma is over your shoulder with a switch ready to go? Like, stop acting like jerks. So, you get this release of emotion. Um but then almost immediately and I was so glad in the book Turks and Chaos, you were very No one likes this word, especially men, but you were very vulnerable about where you were at emotionally. And you have this inner wrestle of being so excited for Brian. Mhm. Knowing that his his case and his sentencing is directly attached to you. You have all the feelings with with Valerie, with the kids. But then you're like, wait a minute. Why the heck does Brian get to go home? I'm still here. Now I'm losing, you know, you know, my my guy in this fight with me. He's about to go home. And then also there's the release of emotion from y'all, there's a release of emotion from the island, but then we all know how the news cycle goes, right? Did Joe Biden walk off into the woods again in the middle of a press conference? Like did Donald Trump say something on the internet that was mildly you know, incendiary? We got the guy released. And so there's this idea like, crap, now the focus is not transferring from Brian's case to your case. It could be disappearing. And then this whole thing about creating this this really this tremendous amount of focus, this media blitz. There's this idea that it could be going away, so just take us through your emotions of hearing the sentencing being handed down for Brian, and then how that directed directly goes to what it means for you. Yeah, you know, there there was so much excitement wrapped up into hearing that sentencing. >> Seeing his response, seeing his wife's response, you know, all the hugs, the cries, the emotion, you know, the excitement of getting to watch him address the media. Um, you're just [clears throat] wrapped up, you're caught up in the moment. And then, you know, the caravan to the airport leaves town, and then the the quiet sets in. And it was the first time that I had felt alone in that scenario and you start to watch the media draw bows, you know, cuz it was getting replayed over and over across the world of of his reunion with his his kids and his family. And you you're I'm sitting there watching the media put a bow on this entire story, and I'm you know, it was I selfishly and and you're and I hate feelings I hated feeling selfishly about it, but you have this thought, what about me? That's right. And it was I start you know, over the next probably 48 hours hitting a new low of Okay, God. Like I think maybe your purpose for me is more than I'm willing to admit to myself right now. And maybe that your purpose for me and all of this is to go share the gospel with somebody in prison and It was one of those things where you have this conversation with God and you think yourself like you almost talk to him like it's you sitting across from him and and I was telling him, man, I'm okay with it, but I need a minute to like ingest this and realize what I'm going to have to give up to get there. I'm willing to do it, but I was like, God, I need you to see my heart that this isn't an easy thing for me to do. And and and you know, and then you feel bad about coming to that, you know, reality. My kids didn't choose this, you know, Valerie didn't choose this. I mean, I didn't choose this, right? Um, but you start to think about all all these people are going to miss out and be affected by this. And so yeah, I I was hitting the skids bad, bad, bad uh for that time. Two days later you know, Tyler Winrick, the guy from Virginia gets a similar sentence, um, which should have brought me hope. But once again, it was It's even more of a pressure relief valve right? >> Yeah, 100%. And then you like you watch the media coverage of it and you watched it dwindle from the coverage of Bryan and it was like, okay, they are like 100% putting a bow on this. And I'm What does that mean for you and Sharita? Yeah, the world will look the other way and they're going to drop the hammer. And some of the locals that we had befriended on the island had warned us. They were like, "Look, they're they're going to want somebody to take the fall for this and you're the whistleblower. You're the guy. >> Yeah. And so they said, "Look, man, you need to like start preparing yourself to go to prison." So I should have been in this like joyous moment thinking, "This is going to like determine my fate, too." But everything at that point started showing me signs of it was going to go 180 degrees, you know, in the opposite direction from what Brian had just had. One one thing, Ryan, as as you've said all this and then again, this is in the book and we're we're we're being detailed here, but there's so much more detail in the book. You again, guys, you can check it out in the show notes for yourself. But the overwhelming thing in all this is you kept having these moments where God was reminding you, "Look son I've got something bigger in store. Yeah. I'm in control. I'm sovereign." And my gosh, through your son, Van. Yeah. So just a few days after Brian gets his sentencing. Uh I want you to tell this story cuz it has to do with you know, cuz the whole while, you know, we're mentioning your kids, but your kids are also thinking about ministry [clears throat] opportunities. Yeah. Here you are thinking, "Am I supposed to be sharing the the gospel with somebody, you know, inside prison? Is that the whole point here?" And then uh Action Bibles Yeah. become a main center point of y'all's story Right. there on Turks and Caicos. And like I meant to have my copy cuz we've got it, too. I've got a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old boy, you know, hand them the English Standard Version of the Bible, that ain't going to work. Right. But you're you're getting gospel truth, you're getting biblical truth and the love of God in and around the hearts of young people in in way that is incredibly important. And so, let's let's talk about the story of of Van. How old was he at the time? And then so, how did this whole action Bible thing get going? 9 years old. So, really the origin of the the Action Bible is, you know, right before this trip, he had rediscovered he had had it in his closet for some >> a couple of different iterations. One's for much younger, so better for like 2, 3, 4-year-olds. And then there's the one that you can read, you know, on into your teenage years. Yeah. And so, he'd had this sitting in his closet and he just discovered it on his own, like rediscovered it on his own one day, and for weeks couldn't put it down. In fact, we had gone he and I had gone on a father-son turkey hunting trip just before this trip, like the weekend before we had left on this vacation. And the entire time I'm driving to West Texas and the entire time back, he doesn't pick up his Switch once. He is like nose in this book, just eating it >> guys for those of you that don't know what the Action Bible is, so imagine like a a comic book or a what what are comic books called? They're like Anyway, it's it's like an action novel or something like that to where it's it's pictures and words. And so, it's incredibly visually stimulating for a child and it allows them to connect with the words are saying. Because some people get concerned about, you know, translations of the Bible and different things. This is not a translation of the Bible. This isn't even an interpretation like something like The Message. Like this is like, okay, this is the Bible in digestible chunks for a child, but exciting enough to where they can almost see like, oh, this isn't just stagnant words on a page. These weren't just robots operating in antiquity. So, it's a very important resource. >> Yeah. Yeah. And he's just caught up in it. And it was so cool to see. You know, he's always had, you know, that thirst for the Lord and and and the word and and probably has more scripture memorized by heart than than I do. Um And so, but to watch him get so excited and he'd set it down and you know from the backseat say dad you know and he would recount stories he's like like and so man as a father I was just pumped about it. Well he had originally planned to buy his cousin one cuz his cousin had seen it and was jealous of it and so Van had saved up some money and my mother had promised to take him to Mardel's to get a his cousin a copy of the book. Which I had thought was just the coolest thing. Well next thing you know all of this chaos unfolds mom's on the island with me. I on a phone call one of one of the first calls that I had made um to them where we talked about like had a real conversation about what was going on and what I was facing. Um you know I I I said look I'm I'm going to do everything I can to get myself home back to you guys. I'm going to do everything I can to get these other families or these other people home to their families as well. Um I can't make promises though. Yeah. The one thing I can promise you is that I'll glorify God every step of the way no matter the circumstance. And I was like I'm going to ask you to do the same. Well this set with Van and and started to kind of you know build up kind of steam up in a in his in his little heart and uh he reaches out to my mother and says hey as opposed to buying my cousin one of these action Bibles. What if I bought a kid in Turks and Caicos one of these Bibles? And so cool man. And so you know we all emotional and crying about it. Well my mom gets to looking into it. Well next thing you know we realize pretty quickly that we can't just have one of these Bibles like order it off Amazon and have it shipped to the island. And so she says hey I'm going to have to potentially have a neighbor There was a neighbor that she had here in Edmond that had a vacation. They were trying to cancel the vacation, you know, to to prove a point. A number of people had. Um they were going to try and cancel their trip to Turks and Caicos. They couldn't. They were going to lose their deposit. And so reluctantly still coming to the island. So my mom says, "Hey, what if I reach out to the neighbor, ask them to throw this in their carry-on luggage?" And when they hear the story you know, it's it's infectious, right? And next thing you know, the word starts to spread around the neighborhood. And on my mom's Ring doorbell camera, we start to see this stack of Action Bibles to start to accumulate. And we're like, "Holy crap, like God is working." You know like >> Yeah. And all these Action Bibles get brought to the island. Um which was pretty cool. But at the end of the day, there was some laws against it and there was taxation and all, you know, import taxes that were supposed to be paid. So, we try to just skirt all this, right? We we don't want to you know, get >> [clears throat] >> we're not in a position to be asking their government for any favors. And so you know, they they throw a bunch of these Bibles into their carry-on suitcases and they bring 40 of these Action Bibles down. We had gone to a church. We took a number of copies to the church. They didn't really seem that impressed by it, unfortunately. Um however, one of the copies we gave was to Reuben's son, Ryan. Um And Ryan was like over the moon excited. Same age as Van, or I think he was a year older than Van. So he's about 10 years old. Super excited about it, you know, spends the weekend looking at it. And the next Monday brings it to school with him. And quickly, you know, starts to draw a crowd and kids are excited looking over his shoulder reading about these stories uh from the Bible and it gets confiscated. And we get a call from the master of this school and he says, "Hey, I heard you smuggled in a bunch of Bibles." >> [laughter] >> In addition to everything else, now you're a smuggler. Okay? >> Yeah. And they're looking for a reason to put me that to end my bail and put me back in prison. And so I kind of have this moment with God. I'm like, "God, is this really >> [laughter] >> Is this really >> the story. Come on, God. And so he but you know, he says, "Hey, at the end of the day these kids seem to be really excited. We I got to looking into it. There's nothing nefarious about this. Could you get more?" And we're like, "Well, how many do you need?" And he said, "There's 315 kids that are enrolled in this school." So I said, "Okay." And so I called Van. I said, "Hey, buddy, here's your new challenge." And Van, with the help of my grand help of my mother, his grandma, um and Valerie and my stepfather, they made a plea to, you know, our close networks like, "Hey, this is what Van's trying to accomplish. He wants to raise enough to get uh Action Bible for every kid in this school." And lo and behold, um yeah, we we ended up getting 350 Action Bibles sent to that island and and every kid in that school got an Action Bible. I love that of all the things about your story. We we don't almost ever know the full impact of the things that we do cuz I think if you watch, you know, some of these street evangelists or people like that, you know, like your Ray Comforts and all that, you know, you love the videos of in 5 minutes someone getting walked through the gospel, breaking down and getting accepted. So you're planting the seed, you're watering it, and you're you're seeing the harvest and the first fruits right there, at, you know, in the moment. We have no idea what the gospel legacy of Van is going to be and Van may not know that until the time of glory. Right. >> Right? Yeah. And what impact is that going to have on the kids on that island, on the future of that island, on their progeny, on the arrows they're going to shoot into future generations because your 9-year-old said, "Yes, Lord." Yeah. Right? And then you had a bunch of adults, gospel-centered adults, with assets and means and with cell phones Yeah. spreading the word, spreading the news and like that's how things like this get done. And so I I just love the the the ministry aspect of that. I absolutely love the story. But now we need to get into June 19th. Mhm. So this is your hearing. This is not your sentencing. This is your hearing. And you know, just the months of waves at this point of emotions and things that have happened and excitement and optimism and and all the way down in the depths of the dark night of the soul that you're walking through. I want to read the this quote here because it's very important cuz it attaches to something that we've talked about with Undaunted Life for a very, very long time. So this is straight from the book Turks and Chaos. He can see right through it. This is you're you're talking about a friend that that's with you in this moment that can kind of see the anguish you're in. You're trying to kind of play it off. Here's the quote. He can see right through it and leans in toward me, "How can I pray for you this morning?" Okay, so this this is a guy named JC. This is a guy that's a foxhole member of mine, too. Okay? My soul thanks him for being direct. It needs what I've been avoiding. I explain to him the thing I've wrestled with most the past 3 weeks, God's timing. I know he has a reason for all of this and I'm willing to accept going to prison if that's where he needs me, but why the delay in any of it? Why did Tyler get to go home after weeks while I've been here for over 2 months? JC sends out a message to the other guys in our Bible study group back home asking if they can jump on a quick call. Given how early it is, I don't have much expectation that anyone will respond. JC's phone lights up within seconds. Nearly all of them jump on the call. They all take turns praying over me through the phone voices I know so well, friends from home, normal life that feels like it exists in another universe. JC finishes by asking God to reveal his design and help me understand the perfection in his timing. After the call, we sit there for a while and watch the rest of the island wake up. I can't stop thinking. This is what being a friend looks like. I can only hope that one day I can somehow show up for him the way he's showing up for me. So, I've mentioned this about a billion different ways, Ryan. Yeah. I've talked about a foxhole. Like, my my good friend in ministry, Joby Martin, talks about mat carriers, you know, Mark 2, the the four guys on picking up an edge of the mat to bring the paralytic to destroy part of Peter's house to get him to the feet of Jesus, right? My friend in ministry, Matt Chandler, talks about a king's table. You've heard people talk about a band of brothers. That's John Eldredge's uh you know, use of it. I've talked about 3:00 a.m. friends, right? We got a bunch of fellows that are willing to help us out until about 6:00 7:00 p.m. But, then who are the guys that are answering your phone call at 3:00 a.m. They and they're ready to go, right? Up to and including burying a body, they're down, they're they're ready to go. I've talked about have guys that'll help you bury your dog. I talk about a couple of guys that just showed up unannounced and without invitation as I was digging a hole in my backyard to bury my best friend, right? Which is a dog, by the way, guys. I wasn't burying a human being, but this was a dog at the time. And then you read a story like this and it becomes as plain as day. But, something like this that's implicit in the story that I want you to go into this wasn't just a a Hail Mary that you threw out there and a couple of guys kind of felt obligated cuz they knew you from back in the day and maybe y'all were friends back in college and maybe y'all rope together growing up. Then they're like, all right, I guess I can hop on a call. These were men and I don't even like the phraseology, but it fits, that were doing life with you. You were known to them, they were known to you, your families were known to one another. This was more than pen pals, this was more than fellas that you used to run with. This was guy These were guys that you were you know, catechizing one another, going through scripture and you were there and you were available. And in this in this moment you realize man, I've been making deposits in these men's lives and when I needed a withdrawal, there was something to withdraw and a lot of men listening to this don't have that. They haven't been making deposits in other men, men have not been depositing in them, so there's going to be no withdrawal opportunity when and if that time comes when they are in the valley of the shadow of death. And so just talk about how much that meant, especially in this moment for you. Yeah, man. It it as as we as we lived through that, it became abundantly clear to me that those men that those families that we'd surrounded ourselves with, those were actually those those families were actually our church. Right. >> Yeah. We so often get this idea that the building that we walk into every Sunday is is our church. Um and it became abundantly clear to me through that time that you know, it wasn't like our church was putting my photo up every Sunday and asking for you know, um corporate prayer over us. But to watch the families that we lived with, that we studied the Bible with, that we helped raise each others kids to watch them show up on my Ring doorbell camera to to play >> [clears throat] >> to play catch with my son um to watch them, you know, mow my lawn I realized then like that is the church and it's like if you think that you can get that by going into these big buildings every Sunday no matter how >> [sighs and gasps] >> uh just consistent you are with it if you if you're not finding your people and finding the people that you can challenge and the people that will challenge you and pick you up um and and staying in the word and holding each other accountable man like you're not getting enough of the church right and that that became very very clear to me who the church actually was and you know we could never step into that building a day in our lives again and if I did Bible study with these people and we went and serviced the community and and you know that would I would still feel like I was 1000% a church member right and so that that became extremely clear to me that um that I was extremely blessed to have those people in my life and those men in my life right because there's something that we are called to do as men and husband as husbands and as fathers um that is difficult and it is hard um and you need somebody that is carrying that same cross, that's going through those same challenges, to be vulnerable for. Um for me to >> [clears throat] >> have a friend ask God um the question that I was afraid to ask God on my behalf um and to know what I needed. Right? That is um that's big, man. That's that's not something that you get just by growing up with somebody, right? That is not something that you get by um having a beer with somebody, you know? That is that's something that you get by being in the word with someone, by being honest with someone, by being vulnerable with somebody so that they know kind of where your where your blind spots are um with your faith and um man, I'm so so grateful for that. And that is that's Mark 2. Do you have in your life I love the challenge that when Joby goes uh my buddy Joby goes and speaks live, he gets invited to a lot of men's conferences. He'll throw it at right in the guy's face. He'll describe what happens in Mark 2 and he does and he says, "Do you have four men that are willing to pick you up and take you to the feet of Jesus?" Yeah. You might have four men that are willing to pick you up. Yeah. But where are they taking you? Yeah. Are they taking you to the bar? Are they taking you to the casino? Yeah. Are are they taking you to the feet of Jesus? And then he's like, "Okay, you got them? Write their names down." Yeah. Then you see a bunch of blank stares cuz you see guys realize immediately, "I don't have four." Yeah. I may not have one. And it's also the concept of uh what I've talked about as well, having an I'm on my way friend. And I I've I've told this story on the show a lot, but but for your edification, you met my son James downstairs. When he was 6 weeks old. First baby, right? So we're already we're like we're chimps trying to raise another chimp. What are we doing? Like why did they let us take this baby home? Well, at 6 weeks old he's having some intestinal issues. We take him to the doctor. They basically say, "Hey, look, this seems fine for right now, but if you see this this and this happen, you got to get him back here immediately. It's a dire situation." Well, in the middle of the night this this and this this those boxes get checked. So here we are in the middle of the night on the way to take our firstborn child to an emergency at children's emergency room. It becomes pretty apparent that we're looking at emergency surgery to save his life potentially. We we avoid emergency surgery by a by a hair, right? But that just means that in a few hours later on that morning, we're going to go into surgery, right? Well, you have the normal default mechanism of the text messages, "Hey man, praying for you." "Hey, if there's anything I can do for you, let me know." And I understand that that's a well-meaning thing. But when you tell someone that that's in crisis, what you've actually done is you've transferred the burden onto the person going through the crisis Yeah. to come up with something for you to do Right. to make you feel better about the fact that they are currently in crisis. Yeah. It's not the help that you think it is. I had a good friend Adam who sent me a message that says, "Cuz here we are in the middle of the night, we go rushing out of the house. Well, we have two dogs, right? Dogs that have gotten used to peeing outside and drinking water and eating food." And he texts [clears throat] me and he says, "Hey, I'm on my way to your house to take care of the dogs." He had never been our dog sitter. I don't know that he'd ever really been around both dogs. He may have been around Roman, my dog. But he's like, "Let me know how I can get into the house so I don't have to break a window. Right. So he didn't ask permission. He didn't, you know, check in with the HOA. He didn't He I'm on my way to do a thing because he surmised this is a need that I can take care of. So mowing the lawn, showing up to play catch, hey Val, this is something that we're going to do to take care of y'all in the interim, those types of things. That's foxhole. That's brotherhood. That's community. That's the the church. And I'm not anti-buildings. I'm not anti- anti-going to those buildings to worship corporately. And you're not saying that either. That is where the church becomes the hands and feet of the gospel in real life. And so I just I love that that you have that. And then around this time, so you have this hearing, you receive notice that there is a change in the law about the mandatory minimum sentencing of possession of ammunition. Yeah. This is detached from possession of firearms, which is obviously fundamentally different than possession of loose ammunition. But then there was a really interesting thing that happened. There was a last-ditch effort by the prosecution, right, to just to just damn you, to get you dead to rights. And you see this. People that don't understand firearms, people that don't understand ammunition, they don't even know how to talk about it. Right? You hear these leftist politicians here in our country talk about firearms and you can just tell immediately It's it's like if you're a baseball guy and you hear someone talk about how many points a team scored, it's like >> [laughter] >> No, they're called runs. And that's not how we're doing this. And so it's a tell that this person's absolutely beyond their understanding and beyond their wisdom. And you catch something and you communicate with your, you know, your lawyer. And so I want you to take us through that. What did the prosecution try to do? And then good thing you were paying attention cuz you nailed them. Yeah. So it was, as you mentioned, this last-ditch effort. And, you know, the entire process seems like theater, cuz it's it's British court system. >> Right, the wigs >> and the pomp and circumstances and I'm and I'm in a bird like this wooden birdcage, so I'm at the very very back of the courtroom locked in this little wooden cage. And I see I see the prosecutor give a nod to a policeman that was standing that I recognized the policeman. He He was one of the ones that originally put me in in shackles. I I see him come marching across very theatrically across the courtroom and I see this bag of ammunition. And I recognize it as my own and I know that there should be four rounds in it and as he gets a little closer to walk by me, I realize there's only three rounds of ammunition in there. There is a projectile and a casing and powder at the bottom of the bag. That point it it had dawned on me. I had read that they had to test fire the ammunition to ensure that it was actually live ammunition and it wasn't dummy ammunition. Um and it dawns on I'm like, they didn't they didn't test fire that ammunition. >> There's not a 6.5 Creedmoor on that island. >> There's not a 6.5 Creedmoor within a thousand miles of this island that can actually fire that. Right. And so as I'm in the back of the courtroom, this light bulb goes off. I'm yelling for my attorney cuz I'm I'm 50 plus yards away and I'm yelling and and we we had our challenges to get along. He wasn't happy about the media. He wasn't happy about a number of things. And so he begrudgingly walks over and he's like, "What?" I say, "Allow it." He said, "What are you talking about allow it?" He's like, "Do you see how deadly that those bullets look with the little red tips on them? It's exactly what he wants to do. He wants to allow this ammunition as to to weigh into the judges uh opinion. I said, "I read somewhere that they have to test fire the ammunition. Is that correct?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "They did not They didn't have a gun on the island that could test fire that ammunition. It was pulled apart." I had to repeat it two to three times for him to fully comprehend what I was talking about cuz he didn't understand firearms either. Right. >> Right. And I said, "That those bullets were useless on that The best anybody could do is throw it at somebody." >> That's right. And and it finally dawns on him. He goes and tells the the judge, "We'll allow it, but we want the want the king or the queen to pay special attention to the fact that there was not a firearm on this There was not a firearm on this island that could actually fire that ammunition. And in order to test that it was live ammunition, it had to be extracted. It had to be pulled apart." And that's when you could hear a kind of a sigh of relief come across the entire courtroom. And the the judge starts to really like slowly but emphatically like nod her head like, "I got this. Like, yes. Okay. These These bullets were harmless." And it's funny. I turned to see Joseph Clement Joseph, the the prosecutor, who the entire time was just being just an absolute terror to us and saying all sorts of terrible things. He He was even posting on social media all these defamatory things about us and and scoffing at us, scoffing at the US government. And I and I watch him with his little wig askew on his head, you know, like hanging off side of his head, kind of just sink his shoulders and slump down in his chair and look at me and shoot me this grand like screw you. >> Yeah. And I couldn't do anything but smile back at him. And so I was like, "Checkmate, buddy. Like I got you." And so it was Yeah, his last-ditch attempt to to really make me a bad person and and to make me out to be this dangerous person ends up backfiring on him. And and there was it was it was pretty sweet, to be honest with you. He got what was coming to him. And so you catch that. But now we're at June the 21st. Mhm. This is the day you're sentencing, okay? So this is the day when we know, you know basically what your fate is. I do want to know before we get into the sentencing at what point, and just say what you're able to say, at any point are y'all thinking we just got to pop smoke and get out of here. We we got to set some logistics in in motion. And we're not going through this Kabuki theater anymore. Like we're just we're getting out of here. Yes. Yes, a thousand percent. Um we had spoken to multiple people about a potential extraction. Um some were a lot more legitimate than others. I can't go into the most legitimate one. Um but yes, it was 1,000% something that was explored. The big question was if I got out successfully, which was a big if, right? There there was a lot of challenges just getting off uh the island. If I were to get out and could they extradite me back to the island? And if they could, then it was going to be way way worse. >> Yeah. We have an extradition treaty with the island that was set in place in the late '70s, early '80s, I believe. The question was is the the gray area was whether or not they could truly extradite me for something that was not seen as a crime in the United States, right? Cuz it's just it wasn't you know, this charge wasn't because I had ammunition in an airport. This was just because I merely had possession of ammunition. So, which is clearly legal to have ammunition in the United States. And with it carrying such a a a uh a sentence there was this huge offset in how each country viewed it. So, no one could give us clear determination of whether or not this would hold up in fighting extradition. And it was explained to me in great detail like, "Hey, look, you might have a chance to fight extradition. But if if you think what you're going through is bad right now and you think that you've just drained your family's finances by fighting all of this, wait till you fight a legal battle in an international courtroom. One, you will likely have to even if we can keep you here in the United States, you're likely going to have to spend that time in a federal prison uh while you fight those charges. And on top of that, we're talking not hundreds of thousands, like millions and millions of dollars in legal fees. And so you start to wonder, okay, if I were to do this, what kind of ramifications is it going to have on my family? And is that truly am I am I being selfish in in taking that uh taking that approach? Uh so, yeah. So, lots of lots of thought, lots of lots of energy uh put into planning those things. Uh Uh, at one point in time, there was a we were going to rent a like a jet ski and drive 7 mi out. There was this unknown figure that had told us if we wired him, I think it was $250,000 in cash. Keep in mind, this is all via signal, right? Like it's encrypted application. We don't have this guy's real name. We have nothing holding him accountable. He was supposed to There was an island or a little I mean, barely call it an island. Little sandbar, essentially, that 7 mi out that we're going to drive it Look at driving a jet ski to. He's going to pick us up in a float plane and fly us back. It seemed so outlandish, though, and and you start thinking, okay, like the amount of things that have to go right. One, 7 mi on a jet ski in the open ocean is a lot. It's a long ways. And so, the the amount of things you just realize there is no there's probably not a legitimate option. And I'm And if I do if I did carry this out, it would be such a selfish ask of me as a father, as a husband. We might have to live in the shadows for the rest of our life. You know, you start running through all these things. And so, it finally, you know, and and a lot of it came to a conversation I had with my pastor. And I was like, John, I I I I just I'm struggling to know, like is this truly God's plan or am I like you we've all heard that story of the guy that was the flood was coming and the guy shows up in the four-wheel drive truck and he says, "No, God's got a plan for me." And then he you know, and then the boat comes and the helicopter comes and he says, "No, no, no, God's got a plan for him." And then the next thing you know, he's in the heaven and God's like, "I sent you a four-wheel drive truck, a boat, a helicopter." Like [laughter] And so, I I'm uh uh constantly like battling with this in my head of like, is am I on the right path? And Pastor John starts laughing on the phone. And I'm in this serious moment where I'm like laying my heart out. I'm trying to weigh these decisions, and he's like, "Ryan, are you trying to tell me that you are trying to from that bedroom understand all of God's design? The same God that created the heavens and the earth, that pulled the mountains from the ground, that split seas, that performed all these miracles? Are you trying to tell me that you're trying to understand his design in all this?" And I was like, "Yeah, I am. I guess. And I guess that is truly silly." And he said, "Man, find out where God has been working in your life. Lean into that. And trust him. And just meet him there, right? And meet him there with an open heart." And so, we had seen these signs all along the way that God was having these small little fingerprints all along the story, and it was like, "Okay, if I stay true to this course, I will probably never see what the purpose in all this is, and I have to come to grips with that. But I have to stay the course and and and stay in these areas where I felt like God was working, and a lot of that was with Mark Wayne, with the with the all the um members of the Codell that were, you know, at our side, with the media, um and I and I have to stay that course. And so, that's that's what finally kind of drew me is that conversation that drew me to the conclusion that these cockamamie plans of of escape were probably not m- were probably not part of this design. I couldn't know for sure. And I had to Yeah, at some point you just have to just accept the fact that God's going to give you a lot of different, you know, forks in the road, but he's not going He's not going to illuminate the one that he you know, that you think. But whatever whatever route you take is is is God's design, right? And so Yeah, it was it was a hard decision to not try to follow through on some of those to to flee, but ultimately, I think we made the right choice. Well, I tell guys all the time. I'm like, you should look at God's guidance for your life like trying to traverse a trail at night with a bad headlamp. Yeah. You know, with headlamp that's, you know, going dead or something like that. You point it up the trail, you might be able to make out, okay, I think the trail bends to the left a little bit. Okay, that looks like a bush could be a bear, don't know, we'll see when we get there. But if you point that headlamp down at your feet, Mhm. you can see the next step. Yeah. And then you can see the next step after that. And so your job is to surmise the next step cuz if God showed you the whole picture, you'd melt. Like you you you you would not be able to withstand and, you know, and and hold up under the pressure of God's vision for your life. Your job is to take the next right step. But here we are, June June 21st of 2024. This is the day of your sentencing. You know, your mom is thinking ahead like if this goes our way, she sends uh your buddies JC and Derek, she sends them to the Treasury to basically get in line because, you know, Treasury's going to close early that day. You know, you don't want to be, you know, going nuts if you get, you know, the the right call and then now we're trying to get someone in line and just to get your passport back so you can get the heck out of dodge. So let's get some people in line uh just in case that you're released. So take us through that morning. Take us through going into the courtroom. Take us through the sentencing. Yeah, you know, I'm everything there runs on island time. Nothing starts on time. I've got this this clock that's counting down. It it as you mentioned, the Treasury's going to close at noon. So if I if my sentencing doesn't come before noon and it's sentencing in my favor, then I'm probably going to spend another week on the island because of what has to take place. And so, I'm sitting there watching the clock, really not paying attention to what's going on in the courtroom, right? Like I'm just watching the clock and >> tick by. At some point, the judge says, "And to which you've pleaded guilty." And that's whenever it dawns on me, my life is like like in the in the throes here, like it's it's on the balance sheet. I've got to start paying attention. Like, you know, like me worrying about what plane I'm going to get on is is trivial. And so, it it's kind of that sobering moment. I I I start to pay attention to what she's talking about, and she starts, you know, very slowly walking through all the circumstances of my case. And it starts to sound like it's going to go the wrong way for a moment, and I'm like, "Oh, goodness gracious. It's okay. Like, I've got to prepare my heart for this." And then, she starts talking about some exceptional circumstances that are applying to my case, and she starts reading off um the um the [clears throat and snorts] the the letters that were sent on my behalf of of all the character witnesses. She um you know, and one, you're sitting there feeling like you're at your own funeral listening to these eulogies, right? And and you kind of have this like you start swimming through these like really murky muddy waters of like all these emotions that you're feeling. Um the most painful though is is hearing a psychologist report on my daughter in terms of what type of trauma has already what what type of effects the trauma has already shown in my daughter's behavior and and other things um, she'd been dealing with. And start to feel guilt and shame and and all the emotions. And long pause and she finally says, "In consideration of all these things, I'm going to you know, extend in a a sent a they're going to extend a suspended sentence." And, you know, heart immediately like starts to beat again and look back at my family and and they are like all in tears. Everybody's, you know, tears are already flowing out of my eyes. Everybody's trying to to cheer silently. >> [laughter] >> She's she's not You can tell there's reluctance in the judge's voice and she quickly, you know, gathers the courtroom's attention and tells everybody to hush and uh, she looks at me and gives me a very, very stern warning and she says, "Hey, look like you've taken it upon yourself to to garner quite a bit of attention with all this." And she said, "I'm I am laying it on you to make the world to use this attention and make the world know not to come to our island with any firearms or ammunition." And I agree even though I'm like, "Look, lady, there's so much more to It wasn't like I willfully brought this ammunition. There's a freak accident that occurred that ended up with this ammunition." But I yes ma'am'd her. We get out of the courtroom and next thing you know, it's just a series of events, right? Like they have to slowly handwrite all the court documents. Nothing's Nothing is printed. It's wild to me. They have to handwrite all these court documents and we're watching this slow, painful process. And that gets stamped. Then from there, they take the receipt to the treasury which JC and Derek have now bribed We've we sent them to the treasury with thousands of dollars of cash in their pocket. Um, and my mom was like, "I don't care what happens, you be at the front of that line when the the car pulls up with the receipt for you to pay it. And so JC uh got about three people deep and then this guy was not going to give up his place in line and he looks at JC and he says, I I'm not willing to take cash, but I sure like that sport coat you got on. Well, it was a sport coat that I'd given JC that I'd outgrown and he was like like hell, I'm not giving this sport coat up. [laughter] So, JC ends up just throwing $100 bills in this guy's hand, finally gets in front of him and and sure enough my stepfather walks up and I mean, literally the timing of it had to be like perfect in everything in order for me to get that back uh get that signed back to the courthouse, get that signed off on in order to get my passport back. Um, get my passport and then it's a flurry to get to the airport um and get off of that island as soon as possible. But you do. I do. You get to the airport, you get on the airplane you fly home you land in Oklahoma and you've got a lot of people there to receive you, but you got Valerie and the kids. >> Yeah. Take us through that. Yeah. >> [sighs] >> I you it's funny. I I got nervous. You know, I know that my kids have been through hell and back over this last 70 days and it's my fault. I mean, ultimately whether or not like there was no intention for me to have this ammunition. Like I said, it was a freak accident. But at the end of the day it it rests on my shoulders that that the trauma that they've experienced, the hate that they've probably had to see online or or you know, in a supermarket which there was plenty of it. Um, that was on me, right? And as much as I was excited to see them, there was this like fear, this nervous these nerves that I had to see them again. But I knew we would get past it, you know, and I don't even remember I I like I watch back and there was like videos of like me and Langford and Kevin Stitt walking through the airport. Um and I don't even remember like I don't remember that happening, right? Like >> [laughter] >> like I just like plane lands, I can hear the tires screech and then in my mind like next thing I know is like these doors part, I hear screams and then I see my two beautiful kids with their little heads floating above a welcome home daddy sign and um yeah man. Uh they came and and jumped in my arms and the world was right again, you know, it was it it just seemed like what I thought was impossible 70 days ago like before that was just all of a sudden like jumping into my arms and the best feeling I could ever imagine. I've never stepped foot in that airport or walked past those doors where I don't hear those screams and I don't remember that hug and I don't remember the things that my kids were whispering in my ear. Um yeah that's it was the best you know, that was that ticker tape moment where you're walking through the you know, the >> [laughter] >> you're going across the finish line and you you get the tape, you know, and get to throw your hands up in the air. It wasn't on it wasn't of anything I did, right? Like this is God's story 100% but it was it was the best feeling I could ever have imagined by a mile. Well, even as I'm reading through the book because I very rarely find myself in someone else's story, right? Because, you know, a lot of people kind of they read stuff in that way. They'll even read fiction thrillers. They'll read themselves that way. But the whole time I'm thinking about my kids. And I'm thinking about what would I have done in that situation? What would my wife have done? What would my community have done? And there's a lot of overlap in our community. But yeah, 70 days of this this torture, this anguish, it it had come to an end. And then when you get home, there's obviously you got to try to get back in some sort of routine. You had a job, right, before you left. You you thank the Lord still had that job when you got back, [clears throat] but there were clients and employees and people that were depending upon you. And you needed to start, you know, making inroads back into those places. You had to start mowing your own lawn at some point. And then at some point you're you're not getting the welcome home stuff anymore. You're getting the okay, well, hey, let's let's let's start doing this. At what point do you decide, okay, I'm not just going to, you know, fade back into, you know, my normal life. Like I need to actually write down what happened. I need to I need to write a book, you know, the whole that whole process. Cuz that's not a a small undertaking. Obviously, I've I've talked to hundreds of authors at this point on the show. It's not a small undertaking to just put your thoughts on paper and then put it out there to the world. I mean, this is you laying your heart out. This is this is a a big thing for you to commit to. Why even go that route? Yeah, you know, we had seen God work so many miracles in that 70 days that I felt like it was a disservice not to share that testimony as often as I could, right? Um there were so many other stories that it that weren't accurate that had kind of surfaced out of the headlines that I and I thought, man, so many people surrounded us blindly supporting us, right? Community members, people praying over us. I mean, strangers that had donated to a GoFundMe to help us uh fund this fight. And I felt like I owed it to them. But uh a big part of it also was for myself. You know, it was for my kids. You know, I I I wanted them to have record of of God's purpose in all of this struggle and and pain. But there was a piece of it that was for me. Um I think you know, we have this idea that if I could just get home, everything will be happily ever after. And we watch so many movies and you get home, you've had this like extreme like like spiritual moment with God and you've seen like his fingerprints first hand and you're convinced of it and you know it. And then you get back home and like you said, everything starts to die off. You get back into this normal life. It's it I can almost I almost have to use the analogy. It's like like to your point of like walking around in the woods with a flashlight, right? And you're like so dependent upon that flashlight for everything that you do in in in that dark time. And then somebody comes and turns the light on and that flashlight, that beam of flashlight, it's still there. It's still on. But your dependence on it is just not there, right? And you start to feel like me I I I saw God so close. I felt like we were so intimate. I had this desperate dependence on him. And now I'm back in this life where I had to be honest with myself. I was taking him for granted, right? And so I by writing this was one to share my testimony with the world. Um two was to make sure that my kids always had documentation of this. Uh but three was to remind myself that I saw God work in a big, big way. My reluctance to write it, though, was I didn't want this to be a prosperity gospel. And I like really I really struggled with that because I didn't want people to think I believed and then God set me free, right? >> Mhm. There are plenty of stories in the Bible where people are martyred, right? Yet they still believed. I was still willing to believe. I was still willing to go to prison and I and and do what God needed me to do um and and willfully accept that going home to my children and my family and resuming life wasn't potentially in the cards for me. Uh that wasn't going to be the ending of that story. But um But yeah, I finally came to the terms with man as long as I'm honest in how I'm writing this and it wasn't all this like wonderful magical trajectory. There was these huge swings and ebbs and flows and I start to lose doubt or I start to lose faith and I start to have doubts and start to question God's design and timing. I felt like well, if I'm honest about it and it's not all you know, cinematic endings and and this and that, then it um you know, it will serve as a just a as a good strong testimony and not be some prosperity gospel thing that I'm trying to preach and say, "Oh, buy my book." If I never I have no intentions of making money on this book, right? In fact, there's not a lot of money. >> [laughter] >> It's not It's not a financially rewarding endeavor. If there you know, the small proceeds that we have, our intent with that is to go buy more action Bibles and to carry on Vance's mission and and and Ellie's as well cuz she took a big part in that, but to carry that on, right? Like this isn't to sell books. It's to It's to show people that God is still alive. He's still working and you know, you just got to live for him, man. Well, so where you're at now as we kind of wind to a close like there was obviously a lot of corruption, you know, you have elucidated that here on the show. You obviously get into way more detail in Turks and Caicos. Is there a a further plan to to try to advocate in a way to where this doesn't happen again because I'm sure you have some data at this point at what this has done to tourism for Turks and Caicos Turks and Caicos. Here I'm saying Turks [laughter] and Caicos. Turks and Caicos. You know, this has obvious ramifications for them because of the media blitz. Like you know, again, I don't know that I would find myself on on many beaches in my life anyway just for preference, but now like in my mind I'm like I'm not going to go there. 30 years from now I wouldn't consider going there just because it's like it's become almost like radioactive in in my brain. And so what does it look like now in terms of okay, we we got the book out there, but are you trying to do anything else in this space? Yeah, so we've we've actually helped four since we got Sharita home, we got Sharita home I came June 21st, Sharita came home in July. Since we got Sharita home, we've actually helped four other families who were in the same exact situation on the same island, right? Loose ammunition in luggage. We've helped four other families get home and navigate the legal process kind of make threats. There was one the most recent one actually Mark Wayne was the one that called to tip me off that it was going on and it was a pilot who had flown to the island. He was an executive pilot. Flown to the island to drop some executives off and was turning his jet around doing his pre-checklist and next thing you know, he looks up and four armed policemen are coming aboard his his jet. He'd never stepped foot off the plane. Never was in his itinerary to actually enter into the country. He landed his plane. He's he's never stepped onto like their their land. They drag him off the plane. They start doing a search of his of his jet and in the cockpit is is a magazine that has ammunition. No firearm, a magazine with ammunition and next thing you know, they're once again trying to say, well, there's a 12-year Now they couldn't say there's a 12-year minimum mandatory sentence, but they could say well, you can be you can serve up to 12 years in prison for this, right? And so they were still trying to kind of make a point to Americans at that point. But we were able to get involved. We we made some pretty serious threats of re-involving the media, putting back the economic pressure that we had put in place. And uh 5 days later, you know, he was on a plane home and they ended up released him. So we've we've tried to stay involved. Luckily, I've not been made aware of any other situations since him. Um his uh so the Messick family that kind of runs the island uh is you know, only the original family. You have to be a belonger to boat vote on that island. And basically a belonger like if you peel back all the layers and it's very ambiguously written. Basically, you have to be one of the original families to vote on this island. Well, there's a handful of original families. The biggest family is the Misick family. Charles Misick is the current premier, like their president. Um before Charles was Michael. Michael was his younger brother. Michael was in charge from '03 to '09. In '09, the UK came in and disbanded the government because of massive corruption that they knew was going on. Well, Michael flees to Brazil. He's extradited back to the island shortly thereafter. Um given bail. I mean, he had extorted millions of dollars. A lot of rape allegations that were against Michael. Um there was some bad things that were going on. It was clear clear corruption. And so for from '09 to 2026, he'd been walking around on the island scot-free. Older brother's back in charge now. Family's got recontrolled the island. And he's doesn't have a care in the world. Well, the UK uh I believe it was in late April, early May, finally forced the island's hand and said, "No, no, no. You were going to try him for this corruption." Uh for which he was found guilty. Um and he is supposed to be sentenced uh in June uh of this of this year. So, there is potentially some slow moving evolvement that is coming with that island. There is, you know, they hired a third-party company to come in and review how they even hold their election process. And they found, "Hey, this is wildly like like not equitable for everybody on this island." Um I think it was less than like 12% of the island actually had voting rights on the island. And so, they It looks like there is starting to be this call for change on that island. They still have a massive crime problem. You know, they still have that in 2025 they had the highest murder per capita rate in all of the Caribbean and Latin America. It surpassed Haiti. Um, and so it it's not a great place. There's obviously a lot of corruption and there's a lot of kind of safeguards in place to to kind of harbor that corruption that's taking place there on that island. But yeah, I mean I mean >> [snorts] >> am I naive enough to think that I can change the the guard on that island? Probably not. But I think talking about it, writing about it, kind of exposing that and shining that light is is really the best that I can do. And that's kind of where I'm where I'm at in in hopes that if if it means somebody canceling their vacation um which a thousands of people had reached out to us and let us know that they did. I think that that starts to send a message and that that island is 100% dependent upon American tourism. Now, there are some beautiful people on that island, obviously. I mean there are two prime examples of that in this book where people gave up their livelihoods for us to be on bail. Um, but it is it is harbored this anti-colonial, anti-American resentment for many many many years. Um and it is just a breeding grounds for corruption. And I think that we need to be as Americans, we need to be concerted about where we invest and where we spend our dollars and what what type of um activities we're willing to kind of support with our with our finances. So. Do you ever see a scenario where you'd go back? No. Not a Had a feeling you might say that. But [laughter] Ryan, I'm so thankful for the book. I'm thankful for really the gospel legacy that, you know, against all odds seemingly is going to come out of something like this with the Action Bible thing and with Undaunted Life we'll do what we can to help with that mission as well. But that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? No, man. I greatly appreciate getting the opportunity to speak with you about it. So, thanks again for coming in. Thank you, buddy. Thank you everyone for listening to this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info@undaunted.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else including how to donate to keep more content like this coming. www.undaunted.life. The music on this podcast is the song Conqueror by the Christian metal band Void AwaKen. Be sure to stream their music on Spotify, Apple Music, and wherever else you get your music. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience, keep seeking the lion of Judah. Void AwaKen. >> [music]