Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast. We're all about sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Costi Hinn. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. And you can follow us as well on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more. And if this podcast has been a blessing to you, be sure to rate it and leave a written review on Apple. That helps us with search engine visibility so more people can be blessed like you have been, because most of the top known or best uh revealed shows on those lists are not all bad, but a whole lot of bad theology makes its way to the top of those rankings, and lots of reviews can help us uh get more visibility. Today's episode is going to be amazing. Everybody says that on their podcast, and I'm aware of that, but I'm gonna let this episode do the talking and do the heavy lifting and prove that to you. My guest is Brooks Buster, a dear friend, a dear brother, somebody that I have a great deal of respect for. Uh Brooks, welcome to the For the Gospel podcast.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, brother. It's good to see you again.
SPEAKER_00Good to see you too. Uh so real quick update: where are you now and what's keeping you busy?
SPEAKER_01I'm in San Diego, California. I help lead an organization called Radius International. Uh, we train North Americans on the other side of the border in Mexico to take the gospel, we like to say, to unreached language groups. Unreached people groups is a little nebulous. Unreached language groups is a little more defined. So that's what I'm doing right now, helping train the next generation that's heading out to very difficult, hard-to-reach places.
SPEAKER_00Man, I love that. What could you tell us about the way that you're training people right now to go to the unreached language groups?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, one of the things that we're finding, uh I've been back four years now. So one of the things that they had found the organization before I joined them was that North Americans head overseas and they typically sound like North Americans for the rest of their life. They don't learn language very well, uh, they don't blend in very well. Uh, there's just certain things. And then in this generation as well, there's a lot of different things that they're having trouble with because they weren't raised necessarily to carry some of the stress and some of the hurdles that are going to be inherent overseas. So we really go after learning a language to full fluency, to sound like the people that you're bringing the gospel to, uh, what it's going to take. We have some pretty strenuous training. They have to get up early in the morning for workouts. We take away their internet for the first six months just so they get used to not having some of those things. Uh, there's a lot of reading of good books. Uh, some of these guys are better and some of them are worse at reading actual physical books and we allow digital copies, but uh, for them to get some of the DNA of previous generations, those are different skills that this generation now is starting to grapple with, but they come out the other end with just some incredible uh convictions and some skills that they couldn't have gotten in other places.
SPEAKER_00This fires me up just like the first time I met you and ever heard about you. You actually didn't remember me, but I want to tell the story of how I met you for the first time real fast so people get a snapshot of where we go back. Uh I was youth pastoring after coming out of the Prosperity Gospel, and I wanted to take our group to Mexico. Now, it was the baby version of what you're describing. Uh, I'd come out of flying on private planes, and I got all these Orange County kids in my youth group, and I'm going, like, we're just a bunch of soft video game playing rich kids. We need to go figure out real life. And so the first thing that I thought of, of course, in ignorance and being kind of sort of a baby uh youth director, youth pastor-ish, was let's go to Mexico and build a house. We need to get over ourselves. And I know everyone does that, and it can be a little cliche, but it was super helpful for us because we went with Mexico Caravan Ministries, Eddie, and we meet them for the first time, and they would have guest speakers. So we're there for a week. Uh we're building houses, and what it really does is it starts ingraining regimen and hard work and get over yourself type of mentality. It's not like we were really changing the world, so to speak, on this week-long trip to Mexico. Um and then they had a guest speaker one night, and it was you this guy named Brooks Buster. And you share the story that we're gonna talk about in this episode about reaching the Yembi Yembi people. And I was captivated, absolutely captivated. And I won't give away too much of the story, but I remember it like it was yesterday. It's sealed in my mind forever. And now we're doing this via Zoom right now, so we can see each other because we miss each other as brothers and friends. But I'm gonna hold this up, people won't see it, but I'm gonna put this photo on Instagram when we release the episode. You had this. And actually, Eddie had a copy there. And this is a book that literally the front says, you want to say that? It's God lo Bism. Or you go, God low bisum, yeah. Yeah, Bisum. And uh it translates God's talk. You guys had the entire New Testament translated, but you're gonna share as well what Nina's role was and you guys with local language and how to put that in. But you held that up, and I could not believe that somebody would go from San Diego, blonde hair, blue-eyed family, your son Bo was very young, and you're gonna share more about that. The stuff you shared was crazy, and I thought this is like this is real. So I was in tears. I'll never forget it. It was very special to me. I came back changed. And the joke in our home and our church was Costi's throwing the dirt of Mexico on everyone. I was like, I told my wife, like, we need to live in a shack, we can't have anything. These people, this guy left San Diego with his wife and his son. They could have been surfing and he'd given his life up, and I came back and everybody had to go to the world. It was like that crazy. And so I calmed down a little bit, but I'm I still have never lost that because what you do, and what I think the Lord calls us all to is strike out, step out in whatever way we can, but to get into that uncomfortable zone where we're living on mission. So years later, we're at TMAI together at an event. We meet, and I tell you the story of how I knew you, and then you gifted me this Bible, and I have kept it. It's on my shelf right behind me in my office, and it's a reminder every day of what we're on planet Earth for. I want to ask you some questions that would help people understand what I've had the privilege of understanding about your story, what many people know about you. Um you reached an unreached people group, the Yembi Yembi tribe. Tell us about their background and culture in their community and also their spiritual interests prior to your arrival.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the Yembis were a people group who had seen the gospel come into a people group that was two, it was about three days' hike away, two and a half if you were really fast. But they'd heard about the gospel landing in another location, and they'd seen the missionaries learn their language, they'd seen them teach some talk, they didn't know what it was, but they they'd heard that the whole village had started kind of there'd been this massive change, and they had heard through the grapevine and through hiking over there and hearing these things, and so they they wanted that. They didn't know what that was. No man seeks after the gospel, we know that from scripture, but they'd also seen that the missionaries had moved in and they'd brought these little white pills and their babies stopped dying, and that was a huge deal to them was oh my goodness. I mean, not only did their physical lives get better, but something is happening to where we're seeing a big change. And so they they started writing letters nine years before we arrived in Papua New Guinea. They started writing letters and sending them out to what they understood was the organization that sent those missionaries in. And so by the time we arrived in 2003, you had seven years of letters. It was two more years before we got in there, but they had these letters built up. And so when we finished the national language, we had to learn to speak the language of the country first. Then we started looking at the different options, and they were probably third or fourth on the list. You were there the night I told the story about how we actually ended up in there and how God providentially moved us from one location to another. But we were we were heading in there and they were primed, so to speak, in that they were excited. One, we were bringing some medical care, and two, we were gonna do something, they didn't know what it was, but they knew that it was gonna be something that was gonna change quite a bit. Some were nervous, some were pretty excited, but that was kind of the backdrop that we walked into.
SPEAKER_00Man, what did they call you guys? Like what do they refer to? Americans, North Americans. I remember using you used some phrases when you first told the story.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, we moved in there, and you got to remember, historically, Papua New Guinea is where uh Douglas MacArthur, the general, the U.S. general, turned back the Japanese in World War II. And so the Yemis had been, they'd gone through some pretty hard beatings by the Japanese army. Uh, and so they had a real love and affection for Australians and Americans right off the bat. But then uh knowing what we were coming in for, um, I remember we moved in and they they didn't have a name for us, so to speak, but the way that a boy changes into a man in the MBMB is he kills a pig at night by himself with a spear. And so that's when you change from a boy to a man. And so they came to us probably the second week in and they asked us, have you ever killed a pig? Well, one of the guys was from Minnesota and he'd killed a pig with like a stun gun or something like that, whatever they do in like a pig pack. And they said, No, no, no, have you ever killed them with a spear? And we all are like, No, no, we haven't done that. So they they gathered together and they came up with a name for us. They actually called us for the two and a half years it took us to learn their language. And then nine months later, when I I got a pig for the first time and I transitioned, but they still kept this name just as a joke. But they called us overgrown boys because we were these big-bodied guys that had somehow been allowed to marry and birth children, but we were still boys because we hadn't killed a pig yet. And so that's what they called us for like two years. It was still a joke. I go back there every year now, but they still call us that every once in a while just to like mess with us. But yeah, nine months it took me to learn how to hunt the other guys on the team. Because again, we wanted the gospel to come with the credibility of an insider. So we were like, okay, we got to learn language, but we got to learn how to do these things that would show us to be like teachers or leaders or people in the community that would be respectful. Overgrown boy is not a respectful title until come over. It was crazy. So, I mean, it was just all these things were dawning on us every month we were in there. Okay, we got to do this, we got to learn to paddle canoes, we gotta learn what it's like to hunt crocodiles at night, we got to do all these things so that the gospel will come with credibility.
SPEAKER_00Let's go, let's go. I you're so that translates in America too. We got a lot of overgrown boys. Maybe for another episode we can talk about that, but in ministry, and I say that a little funny, but it you know, this generation, I mean, guys are there's some pretty boys in the pastorate, and you can get a good degree, you get your little scholarship, or mom and dad pay for it, or whatever. You end up in ministry, and we're not battle tested. And so I'm thankful for men like you that uh go in there and thankful for the yembi yembi mentality. I think we need a little bit of that ourselves over here. Okay, some good questions um that you've prompted uh first. So why in the world did you go there or what prompted you? And you know I'm talking deeper than just, hey, well, it's the gospel, man. It is that simple. I agree. But for you personally, with Nina and Bo, your family, what prompted this take us there before you ever went?
SPEAKER_01Well, we we graduated from college. I got a degree in business administration. I started working in the field of accounting. Uh, I ended up being pretty decent at it. I worked overseas. I eventually became the chief financial officer for a Dutch company. Uh, worked a lot in the Netherlands, a little bit in Germany, and we started to we started to do pretty well. We paid off our student loans in about a year and a half. We started looking at houses in the nice area of uh San Diego called La Jolla. My wife had uh Mercedes or one of the first uh Mercedes S-bases, and she there was just different things, and we're going, man, this is great. And we were active in our church, we were helping out with the youth. It wasn't like we were walking away from the Lord in this, we were supporting about five missionaries. And there was this growing idea that okay, we're probably gonna retire somewhere in our late 30s. Um, there's just a lot of good things going here. My son's gonna go to USC, he's gonna play on the water polo team, maybe he'll come back and help the Chargers. It's all gonna be great. And we we had this lingering thing like, is this all there is? And God in his grace, we we never got, and I I'm shocked when I went to the field, same deal. I'm I interviewed 200 missionaries at one of our national conferences. We never got a missionary call. We read our Bibles, we believed what they said, what our Bible said was true, and passages like Matthew 28, 18, Romans 10, 15, uh, Romans 15, 20, and planning a church where the gospel's never been, what it's gonna be like someday in Revelation 5:9, when all people, languages, nations gather together. Like, there's still those ones out there that haven't heard this yet. And that kept boring in on our life. Like, really? This is it? This the jet skis and the cars and the house, like this is it. This is what we're gonna say at the end of our life, what the sum total was. And these passages would not let us off the hook. And so, based on that, we said, okay, we're we're gonna head in this direction, we're gonna walk away from this. It took a, I mean, this sounds like really simple on a podcast to say this was about a year and a half process of God stripping our fingers off of our dreams. It took a while for us to walk away from this, but God in his grace gave us a bigger dream, we think, uh something to where that book that you're holding in your hands and that church that exists in Yembi Yembi today, like that that is what we get to say at the end of our life when we stand in front of the king. This is what we did with our lives, and that that's something that I'll be forever proud of.
SPEAKER_00That's incredible. How did you guys train to go there?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, at that time we looked at, okay, if we're gonna give our lives for this, we want to go someplace where the gospel has never been before. And so the best training at that time was this organization uh that specialized in getting two unreached people groups. And we went through two years of training. Uh, we went through a year of kind of it would be for lack of a better term, missionary boot camp. And then we went through another year of language school, phonetics, phonemics, linguistics, uh, how to break down a language that's never been written down before. Uh, people have probably never heard it before. How do you do that? So that's the training that we provide down at Radius now is some of that background. Here's here's how we did it, and there's other staff. There's like 12 other families on staff, nine of them have also done this before. But how do you get those technical tools? That's where a lot of missionaries go sideways. They have great zeal, and that zeal isn't accompanied with knowledge. How will I do that when I get there someday? How do you build an airfield? I had never thought about that in my life. How would you take a piece of jungle and actually take down these trees to the point to where you could rip out the stumps and then level it, and all you've got is bush knives, axes, and about a thousand tribal people? Like, how do you do that? It's just that was the training we went for.
SPEAKER_00Unbelievable. It never gets old when I see the pictures and we talk about this. Thinking of that right there. Imagine going into a jungle environment, and every American can think of what that looks like in their mind, and trees and stumps, and then that's gonna be this very clear runway where a bush plane is gonna come and land. Just blows my mind still to this day. Uh, talk to us about getting remarried. My favorite, one of my favorite stories.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we moved into Yembi. The guys moved in first because we had to build the houses before the ladies and the kids came in. And so we moved in and they adopted us into clans. And so there's four clans in Yembi Yembi. There's the ostrich clan, the eagle clan, black cockatoos, and the two cans. So I'm a fairly tall guy, I'm about six foot three, I've got these long legs, and so they're like, Yeah, you're definitely in the ostrich clan. So they stuck me in the ostrich clan just based on how tall I was. And I got this crooked nose from playing too much basketball in high school and college, and so they're like, Yeah, you're in there. So you can't marry someone from your own clan. So before my wife showed up, they put her in the Eagle clan. So we move in, and the day that the wives come in, I mean, there's this huge party because some of them had never seen a woman from the outside before. Like this was a new thing. They'd seen they'd seen tourists and they'd seen a few other people, uh, a few other males come in, but they'd never seen females and then little kids. Like this was just a shocker. My son's two years old. And so we move in, or the the ladies and the kids come in on uh this boat. It's a really small little outboard motor boat. And so they pulled in in the afternoon and they said, We gotta marry you. Like you can't be living together if you guys haven't been married. And they asked us how we've been married, and we told them, Well, we were married in a building and she wore this and that. I mean, we're working through a translator because we don't know their language at that point. They're like, You didn't get married. You may think you got married, but you didn't really get married. I love it. And so well, they took my wife off to the corner of the village and the Eagle Clan uh aunt and moms and all the other people that she all of a sudden were calling family members. Uh, they decorated her and all these eagle feathers, and they put some ash on her face and other things and made her look beautiful. I'm doing air quotes right now for those who can't see it. But she uh she comes in and my clan is there, and we had to pay a bride price. I wasn't prepared for that, but we paid in pots and pans and other things, and all of my brothers and all of my family, because you you always have to pay, and that shows the value of the bride. And then they put our hands together, tied them up with a black vine, and we were married official. And so it was just it was like culture shock of culture shock, stepping back into another world.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Can you do me a huge favor and email me a couple of photos after we record this? And Ken, would you be uh willing to allow us to post on Instagram with this episode a couple of the shots?
SPEAKER_01That's fine. Yeah, I'll send you. I mean, Nina is nervously laughing during the whole thing because she had to step over like my aunt and there's all this culture in there, but she's afraid she's gonna break their legs and she's moving. Oh, it's just it's crazy. But anyway, I'll try and send you a couple shots.
SPEAKER_00Okay, because I remember the one photo of her, and it's it's one of my favorite ones, and it just you know, picture's worth a thousand words, and you look and you can really see what you're describing. You guys went all in, you immerse yourselves in that culture, and that was a lot of credibility for you both. Um, so talk to me about what you started doing when you got there. So you're married, you're there, you have families, ostrich clan, eagle clan, you're together now, you're married. What did you start doing with your days?
SPEAKER_01As soon as we could, as soon as the house was livable, and I mean, my wife, what will happen when she reach reaches glory someday? I mean, from being a valley girl from Southern California and then moving over there, and she's in this house that is just I mean, we had all sorts of stuff going on there. But, anyways, we didn't finish the house for another two years, but we wanted so badly to get into language study because that that was going to be the gateway for the gospel to actually come. We couldn't work through a translator effectively to communicate the most important message on the face of the earth. And so we started into language study, and man, I would spend 10, 12 hours trying to dive deep into this. Simultaneously, we're building the airfield because we didn't have access to, I mean, we had to go for a two and a half hour, it was either a motor canoe or a boat. So we had to go to another airfield. So we're building the airfield and we're learning language and culture. We're learning how they think because again, you know this from the scriptures, but no man is a blank slate. Everybody has presuppositions, everybody has ideas, they have a cosmology story, they have all sorts of ideas of where the world came from, where their ancestors came from. And missionaries who are thinking through this, and this is what we teach down at Radius, you're not looking for addition, you're not looking to add on to what they already have, you're looking for displacements, you're looking to push that worldview out with the biblical worldview. This is what the God of this book says, and this is how he says he created the world, and this is who he created, and this is his nature, and these are his attributes. But you can't displace that existing worldview unless you know it intimately, unless you're familiar with where they're gonna run mentally. When I get to Cain and Abel and I'm teaching this story, this is where they're gonna go. This is how they think, this is their ancestor stories about the two brothers that first created the Yembi MB line and all of that stuff. And so we're diving deep into their not only their language, but their culture to get. That worldview displacement because too many Christians go too fast. They don't know what they're teaching into before they bring the message of life. And they unfortunately get addition, which is just code for syncretism, the mixing of two worldviews. So they don't get Christianity, they don't have their original, they just have a mixture of the two. And that's so much what we wanted to avoid.
SPEAKER_00That's so helpful. How long did you take before you shared the gospel message?
SPEAKER_01We had we had a couple exceptions where we knew uh certain individuals, a young man and then uh older lady were dying, and we made an exception to where I was furthest along in language, and I jumped in there and did my best before they they were either dying from malaria or their another one was dying from typhoid. And we were we made some exceptions, but it took us two years to get to the point to where we felt like we know their language. We had independent tests that showed that we could speak very clearly. We'd done the translation work. Uh, we wanted to get the portions of the Old Testament, we wanted to get the other stuff coming into the New Testament ready because otherwise it's just my word against your ancestors' words, and that's what we wanted to avoid, what this book says. And so we had to get these certain things in line. So it took us about two years before we actually started the teaching. And we didn't start in Romans, we didn't start in Matthew, we started in Genesis 1-1 and walking them through those crucial passages. It was just it was a long process, but to see that displacement that I was talking about rather than syncretism, we felt like we had to have a firm grip on what they believed.
SPEAKER_00Wow. And as you're sharing along Genesis 1 and through the Bible, did it take so it was two years before you started doing that, but how long until you got to the actual gospel message where you're tell us about the teaching hut and sort of what what that was all leading to?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, what I think maybe you heard this when you were down at Caravans, but the Yenbis are really in your face, kind of pushy people. And that that can be rough at the get-go, but it's beautiful right now for the church. I mean, you'll have guys in this sitting in the church, and if a guy starts to go a little sideways in the way he's teaching, the Yenbis will tell you, hey, you need to hold it up. Wait a second, you're starting to go off. The canoe's starting to turn, is what they say. They'll call you out from the congregation. I mean, they'll so when we started teaching, we taught Genesis 1, 2, and then 3. And we camped out in Genesis chapter 3 for at least two weeks, just because if they don't understand the fall of mankind, what's the point of this guy who's going to come and save us? Save us from what? Who cares? And so majoring on Genesis chapter 3, and we would teach and then we would act things out, teach and act it out because they're very concrete learners. And the fall, when I dressed up, I have this black bed sheet, I dressed up like Satan. And my coworker's wife, she's Eve, and I'm tempting her. And we're walking around and we're whispering or we're talking as loudly as we can because you've got a thousand people that are listening to this. And I'm telling her, if you just reach, if you just take that fruit, if you take a bite, your eyes will be open and you'll be just like God. And the Yembis can't stand it. I mean, they're they're so into this story. They're jumping up and they're grabbing her hand and they're saying, Don't do it, don't do it, you idiot. Look at your look at your belly, look at how full it is. Where do you think that food came from? Who gave you these things? Who gave you everything you have? And I mean, just wow, they're into this story. And so my coworker, I mean, eventually we get them to sit back down. No, no, no, this is the story, and they're like, but she's gonna make a mistake. I know, but that's the you gotta listen to it. The talk will turn. At some point, it'll turn. And so my coworker's wife, she takes the fruit, she takes a bite. The people go quiet and we talk about the ramifications of sin. And I tell you what, Gossi, the the way that the North American mind works, we don't see a lot of people buried, we don't see a lot of bodies, we don't see women in childbirth going through deep pain and sometimes dying. We hit when we first moved in, about 5%, 7% of the girls in Yembi that gave birth to their first child died in childbirth. And so these weren't some abstract thoughts. This was real. And then to tell them, but there is one coming. There is one coming who is going to make all things right again. He's not only going to make the things, he's gonna, he's gonna be the one who will actually bring the relationship between God and man back together again, like it was before. And I mean, just the palpable excitement that that was the the way that it dawned on me that this was actually having a deep effect was the next story when we get to Cain and Abel, one of the guys stands up in the middle of when we introduce Cain and Abel and says, Wait, wait, wait, wait, this one that you speak of, Cain, is he the one? And I said, What do you mean? Is he the one who's going to bring God and man back together again? You promised that there was going to be someone that was going to do that. Is he Cain? Is he the one? I said, No, he's not the one. Thank you for listening well. That's a that's a great question. Wow. But that he's not the one. And every Old Testament character we introduced, Moses, Abraham, Joseph, someone would stand up in the Old Testament characters and say, is he the one? And so you're you've got this building momentum for when the Christ comes on the scene. And I mean, it's like I mean, I hate to say this because it's so it's like the Old Testament is designed all to point to the one who is going to come. And that's how, yeah, that's how they were taking it. It was amazing.
SPEAKER_00That is, uh you're it's like living in the Old Testament all the while when the prophets foretell. And it yeah, you could almost imagine uh maybe you know, with Elizabeth's excitement and you look at Zechariah, and you just the different characters, even as you cross over into the New Testament and the gospel narrative, this explosion of excitement that the Messiah had come or was about to come. I can feel that through what you're saying. I mean, it's palpable, it's tangible. Okay, a couple of things that came to mind as you were describing all that. These are rabbit trails that want to go down because probably if somebody's listening and they're a mom, and and we have quite a few who have even wrote in and said the show's been a blessing to them, and they're they're at home with the kids or different places commuting and they're listening. I don't know if everyone caught it, but you said two-year-old's done when you first got there. And we have a two-year-old, Timothy's too. So I just was imagining him. And tell me what that was like. First of all, most parents think that's crazy. Like we're not gonna go, we can't do that because you know, we have a two-year-old, or know that you know, their kids were probably older, or maybe they didn't have kids. Tell us about the challenges you faced with your son and him being two, and the fears and the worries and anxieties and natural feelings, so that we we don't think you're you're completely superhuman. But then also you know, were there brushes with death? You talked about malaria and different things killing even people in the village. Um take us there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um this is I mean, it's a great question because it's the number one thing that moms think about. We do a lot of polling, we do a lot of question asking for the students coming into radius who are getting ready to do these types of things, whether it's in urban or rural environments. And the number one fear of married ladies is one, will my kid turn out normal? And two, is he going to be, she going to be safe where we're going? And yeah, it was, I mean, come on, it was a challenge. He moves in and he's this two-year-old who is just a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Southern California kid, and he's living in this environment where nobody speaks his language, and he's got to catch up to speed on some things pretty fast, and then we've got to homeschool him, and he would grow up in that location all the way up until his 15th birthday when we moved back here to the United States. But wow, the one of the things that we really pressed hard on at the beginning was this isn't mom and dad's thing, this is our family's thing. We're all bought into this, and there's gonna be a part that you're gonna have to play in this. And I mean, I one of the pictures I'll send you too is when we were acting out Abraham and Isaac and me, with we have no other kids. I have one son, that's all I have, that's all God gave us. And for us to play and to to act out Abraham and Isaac and him to be part of that and other things, and when he was younger, man, your role, buddy, in this is to sit well, to be quiet for the hour and a half that dad has to teach. But someday, you're not gonna understand it right now, but someday you're gonna understand just what you got to be a part of. And when you stand before Jesus someday, you get to say, I was part of this too. And so there's some cool aspect to that. The older he got, he obviously got to hunt before we did. He was hunting little marstupials and other things out there, and then they'd take him on these little baby crocodile hunts. His mother would not let him go on the big crocodile. It's it's a boy's world. It's such a boy's world. And so, I mean, he got a box of matches, he'd go outside and play, and his buddies, he and eventually, the sons of the believers and the guys there, the party that they had for him when we left to come back to the United States and just the transformation from what was culturally acceptable, what they would call a boy in training, versus now a Christian boy, and how that Christianity changed their life. I mean, he got to be a part of that, but it wasn't without its lumps. I mean, when he's crying because he trips, and all the kids think it's so funny, and he's just he's the weird kid for the first year, year and a half before he can understand the games that they play and how they they hit this certain coconut ball, and then you've got to chase back and forth. This is nothing like baseball. What in the world is this? And just he's got to adjust to these things, but he comes around eventually, and we keep building up the Yembi MB people and it's like this is what unsafe people do, bo. This is how they live, and we shouldn't look down on them for any of this kind of stuff. And we're working hard to learn their language. We have little language contests around the lunch uh table and the dinner table talking about Yembi culture so that he feels like he's a part of it. That that was just part of growing up in that that area.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Did you guys ever have any close calls with death while you were there?
SPEAKER_01We did. Um, probably the hardest time for me. I was out on a hunt and I heard the plane landing uh far away because it's I mean, it's the only airfield for miles and miles in any direction. And so we heard the plane circling, and that was never a good thing. And so I'm out of contact. Uh, we knew that we didn't have a flight that day, so I get back just in time in the canoe, and I see them loading him and my wife into the plane. The the plane had diverted from another location. He had malaria really bad, and they were Medevacing him out of there. And so I pray with him and my wife on the actual airfield. There's not enough space for me to fit in the plane, and they fly off, and they're getting ready to get Medevac to Australia. And the doctors met him at the airfield uh where he landed. They gave him some medication. Uh, he turned the corner in the night and they didn't have to medevac him all the way to Australia. But those are hard things. I tell you what. I mean, one of the things that people ask me, especially college students, they'll they'll say something to the effect of, I could never do that. I could never do those things. And I used to answer, no, no, you can't. We're we're really normal people. We're actually maybe a little bit less than uh, we're not above average, we're kind of just right in the middle there. But I answer the question differently now, in that you're right, you couldn't do those things right now. But the God of all grace, when you reach that stage to where you need to learn that language, when you reach that stage to where you've got to do that difficult thing, when you reach that stage, he gives you the grace for each one of these things in its due time. But it doesn't happen right at the front, like, oh, now I've got all the faith to do this. Please, I mean, if somebody would have told me that I would have gone through that, I don't know if I would have gotten on the plane in the US to go. But God gives you the grace for each one of those things when it comes.
SPEAKER_00That wisdom applies to so much in our lives. I'm so glad you shared that because whether you are here in the US and you're just embarking on a new project or you're gonna teach in children's ministry for the first time, or you're a church planter, or you're a pastor trying to figure out what's next, or you're a missionary, you're a mom, uh dad going to work today, whatever you are, wherever you are, uh God will give you the grace you need to take on today. Um speaking of specific moments and times where you needed grace. Tell us about the day that you went there in the teaching hut and you give them the gospel, you extend the call. What happened and how receptive were the people? Were there some who hated your message or rejected what you said? Tell us about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, April 21st, 2008, that was the day we presented the death, burial, and resurrection. And I mean, things had been building to that point, and we already had some that were pretty adamantly opposed to this message. This talk says that I'm not good enough. This talk says that my ancestors were wrong. This God is making claims on my life. And so we already had seen uh a lot of the tribal people wrestling deeply with which road do I go on? I can't hold both things to be true. One is true, one is not. And so, yeah, April 21, uh, we teach, we act it out, we teach, we act it out. So we acted out the death, and we acted out the burial, and then we act out the resurrection. And uh we're teaching and we're reading through scripture as we're going through this. And I mean, people are pretty riveted, they're not they're not passive listeners, and they're trying to figure out how this all comes together. And um, I'll never forget. I mean, we God in his grace, we knew that this was going to be a big day, and we've been having rainstorms that had been coming. I think I told you this story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh rainstorms that were coming in the afternoon, and sure enough, we could see out in the horizon there was a rainstorm coming. And in between the death and the burial of Christ, we we got together as a team, uh, my two coworkers, myself, our wives, and we prayed, and Lord, please just uh help help us with this. Because if the rain comes, everybody's heading to their houses, the temperature is going to drop down into the low 80s, and everybody's gonna be freezing to death, and then they're they're all head. So we we prayed, and it was amazing. I mean, uh I've never I've seen a few things in my life that I I can't understand, but I we saw this rainstorm come at us, and we could see rain on our right, rain on our left, but on the probably about the half mile where the Yembi village is at, we just never got rain done. Like there was nothing that hit us. And so even the unbelievers who are against this talk at this point are going, this is pretty weird. And at the end of the presentation, I mean, we didn't have this big, oh my goodness, everybody, their eyes are open. We had about 50 people. We followed up with every one of them individually, but about 50 people that we believe understood who this one was, this Christ, and how it tied back. I mean, the Passover, what happened in the Passover in Egypt was such a big thing for our guys, and tying it to that and going, oh my goodness, this is the one, this is why he had to die, this is why his blood had to be shed. And then the father says, This sacrifice is sufficient, and he brings him back to life. And I mean, just that impact, and then how those 50 lived for the next two or three years, eventually, nearly half the village now are Christians and they've turned into the majority of the village, and now they're sending out their own missionaries. But that day was the day of days. I mean, it was just incredible to see the gospel. I mean, if you think about this just for a second, for the first time in the history of the world, a Yembi speaker is now a child of the king. Like that, that's an amazing thought.
SPEAKER_00That's miraculous. There, there had to be some who who experienced some persecution, weren't there, from other tribesmen and their families, or tell us about any division or even some challenges they still face.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, the persecution was pretty brutal. We started getting into the book of Acts, Romans was really rough. Uh, just the separation was pretty evident in that the way the believers thought, the things that the believers valued. The unbelievers, when somebody dies in Yembi Yembi, there's about a week, maybe a little bit longer, a moratorium on going out at night because everybody believes the spirit of the dead person is going to go around and inflict harm on anybody who isn't respecting the death, the death time. Well, the believers start changing things and they start going out and they start hunting at night still while somebody's dead, not because they're disrespecting, but because they know, no, no, no, that's not what happens with spirits when somebody dies. They go to heaven or they go to hell, but there is no walking around on the earth. And then the believers start giving their wives food from their pig hunts. This is hugely, this is so out of step culturally. You don't give your wives because then your ability to hunt will go down. You won't, you'll be infecting your ability to hunt. Your wife will mess that up. And so, but their wives are eating pig meat from their hunts and they're still able to kill pigs. And like they're turning the culture slowly on its head, and this is causing all sorts of stress. This is causing families to break apart. There's other things that are happening, but the believers are starting to see that their identity doesn't line in line up with ostrich, eagle, black cockatoo, toucan. It lines up with who understands this talk, who understands who the Christ one is, and those allegiances shifting. Oh my goodness. I mean, that the first baptism was brutal. We had people get their teeth knocked out, we had gardens cut down, we had all sorts of things. But the believers holding and holding steady to this truth, that was the biggest testimony that could have ever happened in the history of the tribe and the church.
SPEAKER_00You're saying things that I I we got to camp there for uh at least a few more seconds. Hold on. You said that the so gardens getting cut down, that's no small thing. That's a huge deal because that's their sustaining nourishment. And then the tradition or the superstition of not giving a wife your pig meat from a hunt. So we're our people need to understand how intense and how deep those things are. That's major persecution. Like if someone jumped into my yard and ripped out all the carrots, I uh you know, whatever. But for them, that's that's like level 10, right? Those things.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I mean, your garden is like it'd be like somebody taking your job, burning down your house, burning down your children's inheritance, like all in one shot when your garden's cut down. Because this is what they they store, they plant these gardens and they feed off of them for a year. And so the I mean, today still, the the talk is of the brave seven, the first seven who got baptized. And the the other believers were literally holding back. We had a crowd of about maybe 300 people that were trying to get in there to beat the snot out of these seven people. And I mean, I'm going, I'm going into the river. We baptized them in the river, and I'm I'm nervous myself. These guys, so you had five men and two women, and the second lady that got baptized, she comes out and her husband breaks through the line of the believers holding them back and pops her right in the face, and she loses like three teeth, and she still hangs tough. And I mean, she's getting worked. It's like when she goes home, eventually, through her testimony, her husband gets saved about a year and a half later. And I mean, I was there, it was like three years ago when he died, and the message that he gave to his son not to retaliate to other people, he gave this it just this incredible ripple effect, but it took this nucleus of about 50 people who are sold out on what they believe. Man, this is the true road, and I am going to stick with this road. I'm not turning my canoe to the right or to the left. This is the true talk. And they're what they did with their lives, how they lived and how they died, man, that was the nucleus for the MBMB church for the future generations.
SPEAKER_00That is real gospel transformation. I you leave me speechless with this every time, and at the same time, I I I get fired up and go, God, how can how can we do something like that? You know, what's our version? What's our our way of doing it if we're old? And we you and I have talked before off the record, um, and you've shared this publicly, but how so much of this is a young man's game, a young woman's game, because you gotta start early learning languages. It's hard to retain those languages. I mean, we learn certain languages when we're older, that's fine. But in general, um without jumping too far ahead, I want to talk about ways that we can try to live this out or what exhortations you'd have for the modern day Christian. But even before we go there, um how long did you stay, and then how are the Yembi Yembi doing now, and how often do you go back? So those three questions. How long did you stay? And then how are they doing now? And how often do you go back?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we stayed 13 years. So from the day that we presented the gospel uh 2008, we stayed another eight years. And I I want to hit this really quickly. The goal isn't to raise up disciples. If you read Matthew 28, 18 through 20, you the goal is to start with disciples. That's a wonderful starting point, but to get Gather them into churches to see a strong, mature church planted that will outlive you and I. That's the goal. And so they were there were Christians, there were 50 really strong Christians. And eventually there was more than that, but to see mature elders raised up, to walk them through the pastoral epistles, to walk them through the New Testament to where this was their church. And that church, by God's grace, is standing strong today. And there have been some of the early elders that have passed on that are in heaven today, that the new ones are coming up. And we I go back every year to check on them just because I believe, like Paul or like John said in uh John 3, man, there's no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking with the Lord. And just to see the church and how it's doing, it's it's a human church, which means it has its problems and it has things that it has to grow through. Uh cell phones have made it in there. There's other things that they've never wrestled with before. And to be that sounding board for them as one of the founding elders of it is important. But man, I tell you what, what a grace to see that church doing things and the elders teaching in ways that I just my goodness, I mean, they they're outstripping me by multiples in how they teach and how they grow and how they send the gospel out to other places now.
SPEAKER_00Man, how can we be thinking about ways to apply this? So somebody hears this story and they're beyond inspired. And if they're younger Give us a couple of demographic answers. So if they're younger, um, what should they be exploring? How should they assess their own calling and drive to go reach an unreached language group? And then for those of us that have a lot of babies and are in roles here and maybe aren't gonna go or get that chance, and then a generation that's older that their kids are out of the house, they've got expendable income again because the kids stopped taking all their money, and but they're not gonna go, maybe, or maybe they are. I talk to us about the ways that people should be living. And you're my friend, I love you, and so don't hold back, like let it fly and tell us what to do, like give it to us.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, I mean, each one of those categories I think is a long answer, but I'll I I'll major on the young one first. Just if I was in my high school years and I somehow had the idea, not somehow, but I I've been reading my Bible and I was convicted that this is what I believe the Lord has placed on my life. Number one, I'd make sure I'm involved in my local church. Too often, uh young people will get this missionary call and they'll go, I want to do this, I want to do this, but they're independent of their local church. The Great Commission isn't given to individuals, it's given to the church. And so be involved in your local church. Show yourself to be faithful and be a servant there, first and foremost. That's the first piece of advice for those guys. And then number two, I would read good missionary biographies. Read Ad Nyram Judson's to the Golden Shore. It's a it's Courtney Anderson actually wrote that book, but what an incredible book! Read John Payton. It's not Peyton is the way the Scottish guys say it, he's from Scotland. Read that by that autobiography. That's incredible. Read Beauty for Ashes, the story of Amy Carmichael. These are things that will thrill our souls, but also give us a pattern for ministry. Why was Hudson Taylor so concerned with fluency? Why was he so strict with China Inland Mission on their standards before they could give the gospel how clearly they had to speak? And so young people thinking of these things, reading these biographies, I think it stirs their heart. It gives them something to shoot for. And then, man, I'll shamelessly throw in this plug. If you're looking to plant churches among unreached people groups, man, I would start thinking about visiting Radius International, the school where I teach at. We're the only ones that I know of that that trains in all of these disciplines. You have to have people who have done this to actually train in these things adequately. And so I would start thinking along those lines. Man, if this is where I'm headed, where is the best training possible to get me to those front lines and to see a level of success? By God's grace, man, I've got to be trained in the things that I don't know. And that's what we find so much is it's not that people don't have a love for Jesus or love for the local church. They don't know what they don't know before they head overseas. And so that's where radius kind of fills that gap in. And then for parents, man, to hold your children loosely, this is something that is so hard for American parents. Family has been edified to this point to or anything that might possibly separate me from my child at Christmas time or Thanksgiving or my grandchildren growing up. I mean, I think of my parents, my wife's parents, of how many Christmases they didn't see their grandson. And yet, for the cause of the king, there are things that are more important than my child growing up three blocks down the street. That there's things that we can do as a family to show that this is our value system. This is what we value above all other things. That would be, man, the middle group and then the send or the uh the older saints that have a part in this. I love the way John Piper puts it in that there are goers, there are senders, and there are disobeyers. And you're one of the three. You're not, there isn't a mixture or there's not a fourth category. And if God hasn't called you to be a goer, be a radical sender. Be the type of person that lives in a smaller house, drives a little bit of an older car, so that that young person in your youth group, that young couple in your church, man, you're behind them. You're doing everything you can to be a part of getting them to the ends of the earth. That's where I think a lot of our saints could be involved in seeing the Great Commission accomplished. Not just this wonderful idea, but this is how our church is actually going after that goal. So a little bit worried y, but that that's what I would give to those three demographics.
SPEAKER_00Not worried at all. Excellent. That's what I wanted to hear from you, and I think is so appropriate for an episode like this. Uh, one thing that I was jotting down as you were talking is, you know, a lot of people say that, you know, we're one of the only ones doing this, or we're one of the people doing this, and and you know, you did the shameless plug. Yes, and amen to that. And I'm going to back that up by saying this. First of all, anytime you come on here, and if you don't tell the next generation to go to Radius, I will uh because they have to know about it. But two, you're not just saying that as a as a promotional plug, and neither am I. Radius is rare because you need the people, like you said, who can teach this because they've done it. Well, what does everyone's logic run to right away? Is wow, there aren't a lot of people who have done this. This isn't common. This isn't like the American church's big mission altogether, and man, there's a whole bunch of Brooks and Ninas running around, and this is what we do for missions. Actually, uh the average church um doesn't even maybe have a grasp of what you're describing. And so, yeah, radius is that rare because there's trainers there who are rare and who have done something that's exceptional because we don't let our kids go, because we don't think in terms of the mission of God enough, and rather usually just think about ways that we can keep it all in-house or on our block as you describe. Um to finish the show, if somebody is thinking through missions philosophy at their church, whether they're a layperson, an attender, a member, somebody who is giving money to their church, assuming that the church is doing that effectively for missions, and then let's talk to church leaders as well. So everybody in the body of Christ, whatever your role is. What are some of the I'm gonna call it a house of cards. What's sort of the empty shell approach to missions where we think we're doing so much and we're shown the annual report, and it's like you planted you know 2,000 churches this year, way to go, and you sent your American money. But then you know we're not hearing stories about people going in and reaching the unreached and uh getting after it and giving up their lives for the cause of Christ. What should we be looking for if we are a sender and we are a goer? Is there some roadblocks to watch out for, or some speed bumps, or some dangers? Is it all fair game in missions?
SPEAKER_01Oh man, I think your closing sentence there, is it all fair game in missions? I think that kind of quantifies where missions in the United States is today. Anything and everything seems to pass for missions today, and that's just not true. We we have to have a tighter focus of what is the actual Great Commission. What does that mean to actually reach every tongue, tribe, and nation to get to those unreached people groups? That uh one, I would say, man, tighten down what is the Great Commission and what isn't. And that's okay. There are some wonderful organizations that are drilling wells, that are helping with human trafficking, that are doing some great things, and those are all helps. But this would lead me to my second point. If it's not attached to church planting, if it's not attached to the local church, first of all, but then that's what we're going to replicate. We're going to replicate that local church over in that context, then it's really of short-term value. And sometimes it can be not only of short-term value, but it can actually be insidious. It can be dangerous because you're saving them physically and you're giving them a false sense of confidence. But if they don't have the gospel and then the church to carry on that gospel, that it's really not going to be of any value eternally. It's going to actually send them to a priceless eternity. And so I would say, man, as churches start to dive into different things they could get behind, be careful of Christian get-rich quick schemes. The idea that hundreds of churches are being planted in months and weeks. What's known today as disciple-making movements, church planting movements, uh, four fields, insider movements. There's a lot of movements in there. When you hear the word movement, your ears should perk up. You should ask a lot of questions. Because even the unsaved world knows this. Something of value takes time. It takes time. There's a reason why, after the gospel was presented, we stayed eight more years to see that church brought to maturity. And if you hear of churches being planted in weeks and months, you should go, what kind of churches? Brother, tell me your definition of a church and then dive deeply into that. I I really worry sometimes when I hear about these speed, pragmatistic methods to where anything and everything goes. There's a danger that, Costa, you're and my grandchildren, you're and my children are going to have to go back in there and redo these things someday because what was actually established was not deep at all, if it was the gospel. That those are the things that I would keep my eye on. If I was on a missions committee, if I was someone in a leadership role, in a pastoral role, be careful of speed and pragmatism because it's insidious, it's everywhere. And I know that you've wrestled with this in various ways. I man, the I showed the students at Radius, the American Gospel, and it it was just it was very, very helpful for them, especially the ones heading to some of these larger areas where the prosperity gospel has taken such deep root. Unfortunately, missions methodologies similar to that have taken root in the church in North America. And I'd just be really careful of those.
SPEAKER_00That's incredible and great insight. Thank you so much for answering that so well. Uh, last question I have for you is how can people support what Radius is doing? Where can they go to learn more? Um, how can churches and church leaders partner with you? Maybe a pastor, somebody's listening to this. Um, I'm even listening to this and going, all right, what are the what are the ways we can further um our support and partnership with Radius and with you here for the gospel and beyond? Um, where give us the the next steps on how to help Radius.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Radius is uh it's a very unique uh situation. We're not a sending agency, we're a training school, so all the agencies come to us. But as churches come down and they get to know the school and they see how this could benefit their church members, the light kind of you can see it dawn on them. This could be really helpful. Number one, I'd come for a visit. Come for a visit down there. You can go to radiusintern.org and on our website, there's a visit day. We make uh all sorts of windows for church pastors. It's the one group of people that are allowed to come down any other time. But if you're a church pastor or if you're an interested party or a mom or a dad or a potential student, uh, we'll make space for that. May 13th and 14th are our radius days. That's going to be when we actually have a group come down. And then May 24th and 25th, we're going to hold our missiology conference. Uh, there'll be a brother from India who's a church pastor, Mark Dever with nine marks, and John Piper will all be speaking at that conference. I'll be speaking at that conference along with Chad Vegas and some of my board members. Um, that would be a wonderful opportunity at Minneapolis, Minnesota to get to know us as an organization. We'll have different vendors there, uh sending organizations that we've vetted that we stand behind, and then some dear brothers from Banner of Truth that have been so helpful to us in giving us free resources for the students there, and some other brothers that are affiliated with us. So May 13th, 14th, June 24th, and 25th, those would be dates to maybe visit or come to the conference, or drop us an email and we'll make a space for you to come down. But it's it's unlike anything we've seen around the world in the way that it trains and in the methodology that it goes after.
SPEAKER_00Well, we're going to drop some information about Radius in the show notes and then on Instagram as well this week. We will have a photo of this Bible that I'm holding in my hands, one of my great uh earthly treasures, if I may say it, uh, that I will carry around and keep in my office for years as a memory of why we're here and what you've done, Brooks, for the glory of God and for the gospel. And also uh hopefully a couple of photos of your time with the Yembi Yembi. Brooks, thank you for being with us today. Thank you, though, most of all, for being an example of what it looks like to live all out for the gospel.
SPEAKER_01No worries, brothers. Wonderful to see you again.
SPEAKER_00Looking forward to the next time we're together. Um, thank you for listening. Please subscribe, rate, review if you haven't already. And for blog articles and more about our ministry, you can go to for thegospel.org. We're back every Monday with another episode. Until then, keep living for the gospel.