[00:02:18] Mark Divine: Stoked to have you here on the Mark Divine Show. Thanks for coming to me, all the way from Austin, Texas, the country of Texas, I should say probably. 

[00:02:27] Justin Wren: I owe it to Texas. I guess, I was bored in Mississippi and I got here when I was four months old and I lived all over the state, all over the country too, but I just love Texas. It’s a great place and Austin’s different, it got nature. We just moved to a new home and we have a trailhead outside our door and it’s just a beautiful place and a lot of beautiful people here too, like just in, in soul and spirit and we’re really enjoying it. 

[00:02:47] Mark Divine: I mentioned to you before we started, but I’ve had a ton of my friends bail from California. Don’t let the door hit me in the ass and head down to Austin and they love it down there. 

[00:02:58] Justin Wren: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great place. 

[00:03:00] Mark Divine: I haven’t made the leap yet. I’ve got a few properties here and my wife was born in LA, lived in Coronado for bulk of her life. Now we live in Encinitas. We got a nice, so we just have to. Pay the sunshine tax. Yeah. And the crazy tax. 

[00:03:15] Justin Wren: Yeah. Well, you mentioned you and your wife doing some practices together. Do you mind sharing some of that? 

[00:03:20] Mark Divine: Yeah, no, let’s start there. That’s pretty awesome. Cause I want to hear about you, your new wife, by the way, congratulations.

[00:03:27] Mark Divine: But yeah, so I’ve mentioned this a couple of times that I’ve been saying here and there that a couple of that trains and practices together. Stays together because you know just like you with your MMA training or me with the seals like when you train with someone hard you kind of lay everything bare.

[00:03:43] Mark Divine: There’s no hiding and you’re suffering together. You’re doing something disciplined together and it took me years to figure that out my wife and I, she would go to her yoga and I would go to my thing and my martial arts and even when I had the CrossFit gym, you know, I would do my work with the SEAL candidates and she would do her separate thing and finally, a few years ago, we said, why are we doing that?

[00:04:02] Mark Divine: Let’s just, let’s train together. And so we started this ritual, you know, we get up around 6 am or 6:15 am, depending on no alarm clock, just kind of whenever we wake up and we immediately begin our practice and that includes a number of things, you know, so gratitude and some journaling and reflection and, you know, kind of like some chit chat, but mostly internally focused.

[00:04:22] Mark Divine: And then we move into some box breathing together, which is a practice I’ve been teaching for years. And then we meditate. And then we have a smoothie. So all of that maybe takes like an hour. We don’t, we take our time. Like the morning time is just precious for us. I don’t, in fact, when I can, which is 90% of the time, I don’t schedule anything before 10 in the morning.

[00:04:41] Mark Divine: Just so I can, you know, really, really, I call it winning the mind before you step foot in the battlefield every day is that foundation, right? Then we have a smoothie and then head down to our office, which is also our little training center. I’ve been doing and teaching yoga for years, so I leave, you know, we’ve got a little divine yoga routine we go through, it’s about a half hour, we do it together, and then we do our high-intensity functional workout, you know, which often includes weight training, and then we do our sauna and, and cold plunge, and that, that happens a minimum of five times a week, and then when we don’t come down here, we’re doing a good chunk of that. You know, on a rest day, we might do it, not do the workout. So I’m kind of curious, how, how is your, practice and training with your now, new wife? 

[00:05:28] Justin Wren: Well, that’s really interesting. I love what you read there, how y’all connect and spend that time together, and that it’s precious, almost sacred for you, at least five days a week. We have something similar. We’ve been together three years and Amy inspires me more so than probably any of my coaches, any of my training partners, and they inspire me in one way, but she inspires me just by watching her daily practices, whether I’m going to do it or not. She’s definitely going to do it.

[00:05:55] Justin Wren: I mean, I do have more times than not, and probably five out of seven days of the week. And, but she is up early and she is reading five different books. She starts with gratitude, but she has five different books out in front of her at all times. She picks up one, starts reading it until she’s done with that one and puts it away.

[00:06:14] Justin Wren: And it might just be a couple of pages. It might be a chapter and then goes on to the next one and she journals, sets her day. We use something called the full focus planner with Michael Hyatt and we really enjoy that. And it’s got your annual goals that you review. And then you have your weekly big three things you got to get done, your daily big three and we review that together. But today we started and we just built a sauna. In our home two days ago, and we have two cold plunges. I’m about to start a podcast around sauna and cold. We’ll do rounds. We’ll do two to three rounds in the sauna and the cold plunge together. 

[00:06:50] Mark Divine: And just chit-chat in between. 

[00:06:51] Justin Wren: Yeah. Yeah. Chit-chat in there. And I can talk super calm in the plunge. It’s going to be a fun time of like, reflection and reactions. And then sit down and have a great conversation because anyone I take through those practices, they always, Olympic gold medalist and Super Bowl champs and authors, musicians, they’ve normally nine out of 10 times say, man, I wish this was a podcast.

[00:07:15] Justin Wren: I wish we had this conversation recorded or we’re going to, we’re going to do that. So Amy and I did it, and did a test run yesterday and today. And so we spent 20 minutes at 200 degrees. I’m going to crank it up more than that. I think moving forward, it was a two thirty and then at 38 degrees, 37 degrees in the plunge, and we did that two times today.

[00:07:37] Justin Wren: And then right after we had a smoothie. And then we just kind of set the day and we talked about this podcast and how I’m grateful for it. And so in the thought of we’re talking about the things we’re grateful for and then just dreaming. Today we dreamt about the wedding some and who are we going to invite and we reflected on the proposal. It was just a really great way to connect and we probably didn’t finish until 11, but normally we finish before that. But today we just took our time and holidays are coming up and the girls are out of school and it was a great way to connect. And since we have that trailhead right outside our door, we normally start with a hike. So we get outside. 

[00:08:18] Mark Divine: I love that. Yeah. Get the morning sun. Being out in nature in the morning with that morning sun is so That’s so powerful. We have the beach. So we try to get out on the beach. Oh, nice. That’s another part. Yeah. 

[00:08:29] Justin Wren: I think for me, I’m 36 and social media from fighting and the nonprofit that I started, it’s an important part of the work, but Amy’s so good and disciplined at never starting her day that way. And there was a season, it could have been up to a year, where I would catch myself scrolling in the morning. That’s pretty common for a lot of people, it’s just such a pattern. I think my brain wouldn’t get started, it would start so much slower, and I wouldn’t have clarity of thought, and I don’t really deal with anxiety, but I think the way that starting my day scrolling, whether it’s emails, social media, whatever it is, text messages, starting it that way, I think there was an underlying that I might not be too sensitive to, but I think now not doing that, I see that there was underlying anxiety or some sort of uneasiness or tension I wasn’t recognizing.

[00:09:24] Mark Divine: I can feel it. Just immediately when I look at, you know, a news feed, so I’m very, very, I almost have to have a practice around it. I’ll like put up a little force field and say, okay, whatever I’m reading is not going to affect me. But I want to be not plugged in, but alert as to what’s happening in the world. So I just scan headlines and I play opposite. They say, okay, whatever this is saying, you know, the truth is probably the opposite or somewhere in between. But the way I look at it, Justin, is that, you know, it’s all energy, right? And so when you’re, even if you’re really intelligent, you know, Hey, okay. You know, I’m, I’m a positive guy.

[00:09:57] Mark Divine: And this is just news. You’re consuming information that is vibrationally at a much lower frequency. level of energy than what you need to kind of maintain to maintain a really positive, abundant mindset. And so you’re not going to cognitively notice it, but you will feel a little bit downer from it because it’s the energy you’ve taken on. I think most people don’t recognize how much negative energy they just absorb every day by being plugged into the news and TV and other people’s gossip and fear-mongering about what’s happening in Israel or Ukraine or whatever. You know what I mean? Whatever the latest doom and gloom is. You know, the scientists say that your brain is wired to be five times as negative as it is positive.

[00:10:38] Mark Divine: And that’s just all of our conditioning. I have a saying that if you’re not training your mind, someone else is, and that someone else is culture, media, government, politics, and it’s all negative. And sometimes a negative comes wrapped in a happy, glad wrapper. It can be shiny and polishy, but it’s still negative. So you got to be really careful what you let in. 

[00:10:56] Justin Wren: That’s so true. Well, I think starting our relationship the first two years, I was pretty great. We were in a rhythm together. And then I’m not sure what disrupted it for me personally, but just a busy season of life. I feel like I gotta get things done and I poured myself more into work and the stuff and the last three months I think I’ve gotten back in on a great rhythm.

[00:11:20] Justin Wren: It’s life changing. 

[00:11:21] Mark Divine: I gotta tell you though, for you guys at 36, wow, like you’re right in the prime. I turned 60 this year. I feel better than I have. In a long time, I feel solid, like strong, you know, part of my teaching is that we can just continue to improve and tap in more and more potential, but it takes training and practice.

[00:11:41] Mark Divine: You got to cultivate your mind to ward off that negativity. You’ve got to learn to use it to go deeper and tap those wellsprings of power and intelligence and presence. And you just keep on bringing more and more energy into your body mind system, right? So that you can like, you know, literally keep these bodies youthful and vibrant for as long as you need them.

[00:12:02] Mark Divine: I learned that from the yogis, that’s the yogi way or like the ancient Qigong master. I’ve studied yoga now for almost 30 years and the martial arts. So martial arts and yoga are really just different manifestations of the same thing. I’m on a kind of a, um, I guess a mission to teach those principles.

[00:12:19] Mark Divine: But, you know, also, we do that for a purpose, and I, you know, I want to tie this back to you, like, we all have a unique And it’s really important for us to spend enough time in contemplation and silence to find that mission, right? To really discover it, because if you don’t discover it, you’re going to live that life of quiet desperation.

[00:12:39] Mark Divine: You may be really successful financially. You may build things in the world, but if it’s not in alignment with that purpose or that calling or that mission, then you’re still going to feel like you’ve kind of missed the mark. Do you agree with that 

[00:12:51] Justin Wren: statement? I do. What it made me think of is the times I’ve gotten quiet and really asked and listened to the universe, the source of love, God, like that’s when my whole life changed.

[00:13:04] Justin Wren: Like the trajectory for me, martial arts was like, for you, it is, it is a meditation, some moving meditation. Martial arts changed or saved my life. I grew up getting very heavily bullied. That’s why I found martial arts was I didn’t want to get bullied anymore. I picked up the UFC VHS tapes. 

[00:13:21] Mark Divine: Is that how you started?

[00:13:23] Justin Wren: I started just watching the tapes. Oh, that’s killer. 13 tapes at 15. I started wrestling. I ended up winning a high school national championship and a Greco-Roman national championship. So. Out of high school, I went to the Olympic training center. I mean, I could fast-forward through that and we can go back to it if you want.

[00:13:38] Justin Wren: But at 23 years old, I’d fought on the Ultimate Fighter TV show as the youngest heavyweight at the highest level. And I was getting my hand raised and I would think, is this it? Is that all? And there’s gotta be something more. And I fell into depression and addiction. I broke my arm, I dislocated it, broke it, tore the ulnar collateral ligament. I had a basically elbow replacement. And they said I might not be able to fight ever again. And I got hooked, this was 2005, so I got hooked on Oxycontin. Oxy? Um, yeah. And they were just giving it to me like, So I actually started my MMA career as an addict to Oxy, and I mean, four months of that with three doctors giving you 90, 120, 120, it was just a nightmare.

[00:14:22] Justin Wren: It was a, yeah, living hell. Whenever I finally basically said a prayer, God, what do you want me to do with my life? That’s whenever everything opened up and I realized. I was fighting against people, but really I was supposed to be fighting for people. And that part just echoed in my soul. And I had this vision and I know I can sound out there.

[00:14:44] Justin Wren: Not to me, you can’t. Recently, I was in Vegas for a speaking engagement and the crew took me to the sphere. I saw that last week. 

[00:14:53] Justin Wren: Were you there? Did you go to? 

[00:14:54] Mark Divine: I didn’t go inside it. I drove by it and I was like, what the heck is that? 

[00:14:58] Justin Wren: For you or anyone, there’s an incredible human story. About who we are in humanity and who we are at heart it’s called postcards from earth and I wouldn’t watch that and it brought tears to my eyes and it just moved my soul and whenever it would show different things, it would have a blast of air and there was a scene in India and they’re throwing all the colorful stuff and all of a sudden you get hit with air and the smell of jasmine.

[00:15:23] Justin Wren: It was a full immersive experience. And the reason I bring that up is when I said, God, what do you want me to do with my life? It was like I was dropped into the sphere. That’s the closest thing I could compare it to, but it was even more real than that. I was in the forest. I was walking down a footpath, I heard drumming, I was clearing vines and thickets out of the way.

[00:15:42] Justin Wren: And then I heard singing, a very tonal tribal singing. And I come into a clearing and I see these dome huts that are only about four or five feet tall. And they’re covered with leaves and I acknowledge a man and he acknowledges me. We don’t talk, but we see each other. I know that he’s coughing. So he’s sick.

[00:16:01] Justin Wren: I can count all his ribs. I know these. I just was flooded with this thought that he’s hungry, thirsty, poor, sick, oppressed, enslaved. Then he called someone else master and I come out of the vision and I felt like they identified as forgotten. They’re the forgotten people. And I cried. I didn’t just cry. I wept more than any funeral, more than all the funerals combined.

[00:16:22] Justin Wren: I’ve been to any heartbreak. And I was like, who are these people? Where are these people? And then, honestly, I felt a little crazy. 

[00:16:30] Mark Divine: Yeah, you’re like, did that really happen? What’s all that about? Yeah, that was when you were 23 

[00:16:34] Justin Wren: or? Yes, I was 23 years old. This was 2011. I think it was August because I went in September.

[00:16:40] Justin Wren: And what was wild was, well, I had experimented with the psychedelics, with shamans and, and, Even medical doctors or psychiatrists that would take you through the different ceremonies and I thought was that a psychedelic reactivation? Well, no, this was more real more pure more. I mean, I don’t know it wasn’t synthetic.

[00:17:00] Justin Wren: It wasn’t induced. Okay. It was a psychotic episode What was that? Three days later, I thought I would never tell anyone this and so now I’m telling you and I haven’t told many people this but I at least publicly and Three days later, I go to a speaking engagement, and it’s this guy named Caleb. He’s a close friend now, but I was just hearing him talk for the first time.

[00:17:21] Justin Wren: Afterwards, there was a line for him, but he talked about how he lived with the Maasai tribe, and a Vanuatu tribe that invented bungee jumping. And he was a wild kind of out there guy, friends of Bear Grylls, and an adventurer, but a humanitarian, and like, did missions, and I thought, well, if there’s one guy could tell, maybe it’s him.

[00:17:39] Justin Wren: And so I write down my phone number on a piece of paper, I’m waiting in line. And then the line’s taking a while. So I go and get my friend’s car and he starts up the ignition and I go, wait, I’ve got to tell him something. So I go back in and I just handle my phone number and say, Hey, when you get some time, I don’t want to bombard you right now.

[00:17:55] Justin Wren: You probably want to get home to your wife. And he’s like, no, man, tell me now. We might not ever see each other again. And I was like, okay, so I start telling him the vision by the end of it, he smiles and I’m like, what? He goes, I know who they are. And I was like, who? And he goes, they’re the, the pygmy people.

[00:18:12] Justin Wren: And I’m like, who’s that? And he’s like, they’re in the Congo basin rainforest. It spans across eight or nine African nations. And I was like, who, where, and he goes, I’m going in three and a half weeks and you’re coming with me. Yeah. But he started telling me more. He goes, you got to come tell my wife this story because three days ago the rebels took over the airport.

[00:18:29] Justin Wren: No one could fly in there. The U S state department says no American for any reason should go. And he said three days ago, my team, three other men, husbands, fathers, they canceled their trip. And he said, yesterday, my wife said, you’re not going alone. You’re going to cancel your trip unless you get a sign.

[00:18:49] Justin Wren: And so he goes, you’re the sign. Come tell her you’re the sign a little like, Oh man. So we go to his house and I’m thinking, I’m already asking him, how do we postpone this? Can’t we delay it? And it’s kind of crazy right now. And I had no force. I had no idea or plan to go to Africa, even for a safari. I’m focused on fighting.

[00:19:09] Justin Wren: That’s who I am. That’s what I do and how to get my life right. And I’m a new foundation. At this time, I was 11 months sober. And so I had started building, but we get to Caleb’s house and we meet Jess and Jess is pregnant and she’s got a toddler running around. And so I’m shy or nervous, hesitant to tell her.

[00:19:30] Justin Wren: And I tell her the story and the vision. And she looks at Caleb, her husband and goes, Caleb, you got to take this guy. And then the best thing I can say is probably the better way to say it is they started coaching me because I’m like, Hey, let’s postpone it to next year. Let’s let it calm down. Let’s, you know, we got to get visas, all this stuff.

[00:19:47] Justin Wren: Like let’s take our time. And they started coaching me. If you don’t go, you’ll never know. You always wonder what could have, should have, would have happened. And so you need to go and to sum it up or bring it about, I’ll skip forward a few things, but we get there, we land, we land in Uganda. We have no flight to the Congo.

[00:20:06] Mark Divine: What are the technical aspects? Like, did you need to get a visa or like, how did you work through the state department? Did they think you were crazy? I had to rush 

[00:20:13] Justin Wren: it. Um, a visa in Washington, DC with the Congolese embassy. Another crazy story was. I had gotten back from Haiti after the earthquake and when I was there, there was some flooding and we drove a bus.

[00:20:25] Justin Wren: There was some water in my bag. I should have kept my passport on me, but I learned after this that I had it in the bottom of the bus while we went through water and my passport got soaked. So at customs, when they go to open my passport, they literally ripped my face off of the passport. So, um, or at least it was flopping.

[00:20:45] Justin Wren: And Caleb said, you need to get your passport fixed. And I’m like, yeah, of course. I, when I Google mapped the nearest passport place in Denver, I just went to it. It’s two miles from my house. I walk in, it’s basically airport security. And I sit down, I tell the woman that I’m going to Congo. She’s like, why?

[00:21:03] Justin Wren: I tell her, we’re seeing if we can go help some people and it’s a scout trip and we’re just going to meet them. And she goes, sit down right there. 30 minutes later, she brings me a warm passport with more pages than I asked for and she handed it to me and said, I think you’re going to need these extra pages.

[00:21:18] Justin Wren: And I’m like, well, how’d that happen? I thought it was going to take weeks or a week or whatever. So in 30 minutes, I had my passport. We take like, I don’t know, three or four planes to get there. We find a missions aviation fellowship pilot. That’s willing to fly us in we’re circling the runway because they don’t know when the last time a airplane landed at this spot and people are running out of the huts with machetes and right at first like what’s going on but then they’re clearing the grass for us so we can land how cool and we land.

[00:21:47] Justin Wren: We get out and drive for 68 hours we sleep we take motorcycles through the rain forest and have been on a motorcycle before and. We get to the river, we take a dugout canoe. That’s the pygmy people traditionally are four foot, six, four foot, seven, , for the men and a small dugout canoe. And my name now is the big me.

[00:22:09] Justin Wren: I used to be the Viking and you’re the big pig. You must’ve looked like a giant to them. Canoe wasn’t big, big me size. And so it’s almost taking on water. We get across. We hiked for about 30, 45 minutes. Then we hear drumming. Then we hear singing. We come into a clearing. We see twig and leaf dome huts.

[00:22:30] Justin Wren: First guy we meet that acknowledges us that we say hi to he’s coughing. He’s got tuberculosis. You can count every rib. And I got so weak in the knees because it was, the vision was so real. And this moment was so surreal that I had to take a knee. I was weak in the knees. My knees were shaking and never experienced anything like that.

[00:22:49] Justin Wren: It was deja vu times a hundred. Then we also brought, , Caleb’s buddy Colin. They’re grabbing my traps and they’re like, this is your vision. This is your vision. And it was, and it was mind blowing because it was like, does stuff like this happen? Can it happen? But it did to the point to where we stayed a couple of weeks and at the end of it, Caleb was saying, what are you going to do?

[00:23:11] Justin Wren: Hey, what do you mean? What am I going to do? This problem is way too big. I’m way too small. I do love these people, but I don’t know why I was brought here except to show that it’s impossible to help in a practical way. They’re asking for land. They’re asking for water. They’re asking for food and farms.

[00:23:27] Justin Wren: And I’m a fighter, man. I don’t have the ability to do this. 

[00:23:30] Mark Divine: Right. Can you describe their situation? Like weren’t they of the land? Yeah. And what was the problem with the water around there? 

[00:23:37] Justin Wren: What was happening? They’re the first people group of Africa. Some anthropologists say they go back 60, 000 years as a tribe.

[00:23:44] Justin Wren: So they’re the first citizens of Africa, the first citizens of any of the nations of Africa, yet none of them have any land for themselves and it’s all been stolen from them or they’ve been enslaved on the land. They have no clean water. My second trip, I held a young boy named Andy Bo that died in my hands.

[00:24:01] Justin Wren: It was waterborne disease and that forever changed my life. It Ripped my heart apart and forever gripped it and I bought the shovel and the casket and dug his grave and that changed me, but it wasn’t just because of waterborne disease. It was also because of, I don’t know if you call it rejection or, or neglect.

[00:24:18] Justin Wren: But definitely oppression. His mom was told the first time she took him to the clinic, you’re too dirty to come in here. That’s what the nurse told her. And the second time they had begged for the money. I was in another village and they had begged for the money. It was 1 for the pills. It was 3 for the one shot cure.

[00:24:35] Justin Wren: It was too late in the game for the pills. They had about three and a half dollars of Congolese frunk and they took everything they had, a chicken, firewood, charcoal, eggs, and they laid it on the doorsteps of the medical clinic, which is really a mud hut with a tin roof. And the doctor said the real reason, which was we won’t waste our medicine on a pygmy animal and turned them away.

[00:24:57] Justin Wren: So that’s why I held him. And buried him and I just couldn’t reconcile it in my mind that any human being would ever be treated this way and they had named me three days before that the chief Leo may he named me F A OSA and the neighbors were calling me and so F A OSA means the man that loves us. And Mbutamangbo means the big pygmy.

[00:25:19] Justin Wren: So I love those names and I cherish them and actually probably three weeks ago, I was given a new name in Uganda with the Batwa pygmy people, which is Olangama, which is, there’s a king of the Batwa pygmy people and we went through a ceremony and I was initiated in as the tribe and adopted in his family and Olangama is his father’s name.

[00:25:40] Justin Wren: So we got new land. We’ve got over 3000 acres of land for the pygmy people now. And that land, 60 acres, they took me to his father’s grave. They got some of the dirt. I didn’t know what they were doing then, but that night they asked me to stay up. It’s just me, the elders. And they painted me with the dirt from the grave and ash, the forehead, the nose, the lips, the cheeks, my chest and shoulders and arms.

[00:26:05] Justin Wren: We had this ceremony and it was, it was awesome. It was beautiful. We stayed up till four in the morning, singing and dancing and telling stories. Um, We’re finally building a hospital, a real one in honor of Andy Bow, where none of the pygmy people in that region will ever be denied. It’ll be open to all.

[00:26:20] Justin Wren: It’ll serve everyone. Um, but we’re building the hospital, the school, we’ve done homes and water wells. We provided clean water to over 50, 000 people. We equip them with the tools, educate them with the knowledge of how to drill it and do it for themselves and then empower them to be the change in their own community.

[00:26:37] Justin Wren: Cause that’s the sustainable way I believe is them having ownership being the solution to their local problem. Because a little bit in the world today, and it’s more of the old school model, but it’s still holding strong is that there’s 230, 000 broken wells in Africa right now. That’s billions of wasted charitable dollars.

[00:26:58] Justin Wren: The traditional model is punch a hole in the ground and onto the next one. Okay. And there’s no real training. There’s no real relationship. It’s not locally affordable. It’s not locally accessible. And I think we have to think long term and also follow through when you drive your car, 3000 miles, it’s going to need a oil change or same thing with a water well that’s serving thousands of people.

[00:27:23] Justin Wren: You have to think that that way.

[00:30:03] Mark Divine: That example is exactly what’s wrong with the global institutional approach, right, to aid. Really, it’s like, let’s just throw some money at it. Or you throw money at whoever’s in power and of course they steal it all or they use it for their warfaring. Or send a team to build a well and then move on and build the next well or build a school and then move on and build and then it all falls apart.

[00:30:28] Mark Divine: It’s good intention. It’s just short term thinking. It comes from that kind of like, hate to say it, that kind of global north elitist perspective that money is going to solve everything. And it really isn’t. You got to have a local collaborative approach, you know, with people who are willing like you to be on the ground and have long term kind of loving relationships with people.

[00:30:48] Mark Divine: I really commend you on that. You did jump forward. Like you, you went from meeting these people to all of a sudden, you know, you guys have helped, helped them reclaim 60, 000 acres, which is incredible. There’s some questions I have, like, how do you communicate with them? 

[00:31:02] Justin Wren: Yeah. So I, I speak some broken Swahili, but it depends on where I am.

[00:31:07] Justin Wren: , so we normally have translators or I always have a translator. That’s one of my best friends. I’ve known him for more than 12 years now, and he’s like a brother, but I was able to speak it better. And then COVID and separation and not being there, but I can hear it still well. And speaking it is slower, but in Uganda, where we have really focused our work over the last three years, it’s really hard in Congo.

[00:31:33] Mark Divine: Is that because of all the, all the fighting? Yeah. All the fighting over the resources. That’s a big problem. 

[00:31:38] Justin Wren: You can do land, you can drill water wells, um, but to build like homes and structures and a house center, a school, all that. It’s tough in conflict zones. So Uganda is very safe in comparison and we’re behind three different military bases and you have to go past all three of them and up a mountain to get to this new land.

[00:31:59] Justin Wren: And so we felt like it’s one thing to go a mile wide. And that’s kind of that show up, blow up, blow out technique and announce your arrival with a parade and throw a party and get your pictures and then peace out. But it’s another thing to go a mile deep with one community or a few communities. And that’s kind of where we’ve pivoted to say, you know, this community over the next 10, 15, 20 years, we’re fully committed.

[00:32:22] Justin Wren: It’ll be high support at the beginning as they’re learning and growing. And then it’s going to shift as they build capacity in them. And they have the more leadership 

[00:32:33] Mark Divine: roles, which are already taking up. Does that start to ripple out to other pygmy communities? I mean, they are in mutual support or they’re not liking us versus them, right?

[00:32:42] Justin Wren: So the new land with the 60 acres, so it’s 3000 acres total. Oh, more than that, like 3, 100. But the 60 acres, and that’s about to get bigger too, around them are all people groups or tribes that have also been displaced. And it might be over the last 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, or just in the last couple of years.

[00:33:01] Justin Wren: So they all know what it’s like to be the new people on the block, and they welcomed them with open arms, and they know the school is for their children too. The health center is for their children too. And the maternity ward is so needed. My second to last trip, which was also 2023, you know, I had malaria.

[00:33:19] Justin Wren: I went down the mountain, I’m at the health center and we had a woman that, , went into labor early. Her child was turned the wrong way. We lost both the mother and the child. We didn’t know about it as it was happening, but it was, you know, it’s a two and a half hour walk to the health center. And when they get there, oftentimes it’s pretty empty because it’s governmentally ran, which we’re going to have government support and work with them, but it’s going to be privately ran and operated.

[00:33:45] Justin Wren: So that way, you know, we know that there’s all the medications and the bandages and everything that’s needed. So I’m really excited. We have a 2 million in kind gift from project cure for all the medical supplies. We have to raise 1. 8 million to build the structures, but that’s everything. The health center, the school.

[00:34:04] Justin Wren: The community hub, the vocational school, the bio toilets, the fish pond, the beehives, and farming. And so, yeah, we’re stoked. It’s pretty exciting because we have a 22 year architect that’s German, that’s lived in Uganda for 20 years, has Ugandan life and kids. And he said, this is why he got into architecture is bringing it all together for a community.

[00:34:27] Justin Wren: And he was showing us the plans and we’re getting 3d models so we can show our donors. 

[00:34:31] Mark Divine: Hey, Justin. So what’s going to prevent it from happening again? What happened to them? You know, the displacement, the slavery, you know, what’s going to prevent it from happening again? 

[00:34:41] Justin Wren: That’s a great question. At least in Uganda, Which is different.

[00:34:44] Justin Wren: We work in Congo and Uganda. In Uganda, the situation was different in the fact that they were removed from the rainforest. They aren’t allowed to live there anymore. And they’re hunter gatherers. Yet, in the name of sustainability, the most sustainable people in the world were kicked out. I know, it’s insane, isn’t it?

[00:35:04] Mark Divine: Don’t get me going on that. 

[00:35:05] Justin Wren: Yeah, yeah. So we tried and we lobbied and we petitioned and we wanted to buy back a portion of the rainforest. There’s some small that they could actually live in there and it just wasn’t going to happen. So we have land bordering the rainforest that looks down into the rainforest, their ancestral home.

[00:35:21] Justin Wren: I mean, it was there three weeks ago. That was the best trip I’ve had in more than 12 years. And it was with local, state, and national government officials. And we have their full support in the Batois. It’s their land in their name that is the strongest thing in most African courts and especially in Uganda is buying the land in the name of a people group, a tribe.

[00:35:43] Justin Wren: It’s theirs that they’ll hand down from generation to generation. We celebrated the four different land titles. And one segue is for a healthy, happy, thriving community. I think they need at least seven basics, which is. Land to call their own, water that’s safe to drink, food or farming sustenance. They need housing, good shelter, um, to be out of the elements.

[00:36:05] Justin Wren: Then they need healthcare, education, and sustainable livelihoods. And so that is what we do. I’ve been on Rogan’s podcast a lot and a lot of times fans come up and they’re like, Hey, you’re the guy that drills wells for the pygmies in the Congo. It’s like, actually we do, we do a lot more than that. I’m grateful they know the story, but it’s.

[00:36:24] Justin Wren: We do not just community development, but community empowerment. We go much slower than most organizations do. And I think that’s allowed us to see blind spots or them to come up to us in a time where we’re not going too fast to where we sit down and we ask questions and they give us suggestions of what they want, what they need.

[00:36:44] Mark Divine: You’re not imposing a perspective on them or your, you know, your way. 

[00:36:47] Justin Wren: There’s no cookie cutter solution or blueprint that, um, works in every community and every culture. 

[00:36:53] Mark Divine: Different countries. That’s awesome. It’s mind blowing to me that leaders, I put air quotes around that, you know, countries and like the global institutions back to that.

[00:37:04] Mark Divine: Aware that the, um, aboriginals are stewards of our rainforest, right? The homestead balance of Mother Earth is maintained by these stewards. It’s actually necessary for them to do their work. And so to remove them from the rainforest in the name of sustainability is absolutely insane. Yes. And it’s a joke.

[00:37:24] Mark Divine: It’s a joke. They’re removing them because they want access to the resources. Fortunately, it seems to me I only know this because I’m finishing up my doctorate in global leadership and change. So I have gotten to study this stuff in the last few years, and I even did some papers on using aboriginal kind of concepts of sustainability and stewardship, which are important.

[00:37:42] Mark Divine: Really contradiction to the elitist United Nations sustainability goals. You know what I mean? Which says that we’re gonna all be sustainable and world peace by 2030. Right. Like really? All right. Yeah How much money do we spend on the UN every year for them to put out that kind of silliness? Yeah, but um There is seems to be a growing awareness, and it’s coming from people like you in conversations like this.

[00:38:11] Mark Divine: It’s, it’s really the influencer leaders that compassionate and passionate individuals out there who are starting to agitate. In a positive way, not in a, not in a conflictual way for change. And that’s starting to empower a lot of the locals because now they’re starting to realize that there are people on their side and like, you probably were aware that Brazil had kind of a victory because Brazil was trying to like claim that any Aboriginal or native who hadn’t like had a, a firm claim on some land in their rainforest down there, we’re going to lose their.

[00:38:43] Mark Divine: Their claim and their rights. I think they had to have a, had a claim in by 1989 or something. I could be wrong, but that whole bill was thrown out or paused and then thrown out because of the uproar from the natives and a lot of the influencers. So people are starting to wake up that the rainforests are critical to our, our global ecosystems.

[00:39:03] Mark Divine: You want to solve global warming, let’s get our rainforest back, 

[00:39:07] Justin Wren: right? Just on that, 12 years ago, whenever I would go to Congo, I would almost land in the rainforest. Actually, there was times we did land in the rainforest. Now it’s a minimum of a four hour, but more likely a six and eight hour drive to get to the same rainforest.

[00:39:25] Mark Divine: That’s incredible. 

[00:39:25] Justin Wren: From the same airport. And it’s, now the roads you drive a lot slower. Because it’s not tarmac and things like that. It’s like off roading for the most part. But still, I think they said the size of Texas or more has been cut down in the Congo Basin rainforest just in the last 20 years.

[00:39:41] Justin Wren: Cut down for farming or what’s the usage? A lot of it is for charcoal, but I would say most of it That is the rare hardwoods that are going to China and India and all over the world. Just for the trees. Yeah. Mahogany and all sorts of other huge trees. So one of the things that affected the pygmy people was their hunter gatherers or were they had a symbiotic relationship with their neighbors because they had the bush meat, the protein.

[00:40:06] Justin Wren: In fact, they had the upper hand for the most part because of a trade for corn and beans and potatoes and things like that. But then they weren’t able to provide it for their neighbors because they had to have it for themselves. And so a little bit of conflict started and other things, but then those neighbors started destroying the rainforest with the influence of people from the West.

[00:40:26] Justin Wren: And so then they weren’t able to provide sustenance for themselves either. And then that made them vulnerable and land was stolen and they were enslaved and put to work destroying the rainforest they actually worship. for that. And they’re not actually much part of that, but sometimes it’s forced labor to cut down these trees.

[00:40:44] Justin Wren: And they literally believe that some of these ancient trees host the spirit of their grandfather or their family members. And when those trees fall, it sounds like thunder, but you can see it through the canopy of the rainforest. There’s no clouds out right now. Why does it sound like thunder? It’s because these trees you could drive an 18 wheeler through are falling down.

[00:41:04] Justin Wren: Can 

[00:41:04] Mark Divine: you know the rainforest, if all this stopped, would it 

[00:41:07] Justin Wren: grow back? Good thing about the Congo Basin rainforest, at least, is the saying is if you spit a seed out, a tree’s going to grow. Yeah. And so it’s, it’s very, very fertile. And we’ve replanted tens of thousands of trees. So this last trip we did over 800.

[00:41:23] Justin Wren: So they weren’t allowed to live in the rainforest anymore, so we’re trying to bring the rainforest back to them. 

[00:41:27] Mark Divine: What’s next for you? More of this? Or do you have other kind of projects? 

[00:41:32] Justin Wren: Yeah. We’re, we started with, um, talking about the plunge and sauna and me doing a podcast. The thing I’m most excited about is the owner was in my home yesterday and they’re donating 300, 000 to us to do the health center, the school.

[00:41:45] Justin Wren: Oh, wow. That’s awesome. They helped us get approved for 1 percent for the planet. So that is a sustainable nonprofits and this architect, he builds with local materials, but it’s built to last. And so I think we’re really, we’re identifying the next communities we’ll move into. We already have two selected, and I don’t know if you happen to know, you talked about sustainability and writing a book on it that there’s a guy named Bernard Amadei, and he is the founder of Engineers Without Borders, and he is on our board of directors, and he’s wrote maybe eight or nine books on sustainability.

[00:42:20] Justin Wren: He’s now calling this his, his legacy project that most nonprofits work in a way that siloed and don’t work together in collaboration or with the community. for having me. And so how can we do this in a way that is everything, and building the community all up at once, slowly, but at once, and making sure we’re not leaving out any of the important steps, so it’s taken a lot of the focus, it’s kind of putting the blinders on and saying we’re going to do this right and with excellence and hopefully have a proof of concept to where we can go on and do it no sweat other places, but also hopefully open sourcing this, , And a lot of the communities to learn from our mistakes and to repeat the successes.

[00:42:57] Justin Wren: And if they want to do it, this was our approach. And this is how we documented it. And this is, this is the game plan. Here’s the playbook. 

[00:43:03] Mark Divine: And it’s so important for nonprofits and NGOs to be able to work together and set their egos at the door. That’s what we’ve done with our, we have a veteran. It’s a veteran focused organization called the courage foundation, but we want to expand the focus.

[00:43:16] Mark Divine: In the next year or two, as you know, fundraising, especially in the early years, it’s, it’s a challenge. It’s tough. 

[00:43:22] Justin Wren: Honestly, I’ve ever done. It’s easier to get in a cage, 

[00:43:25] Mark Divine: but we’ve tried to platform it to where, you know, like our fundraisers are also fundraisers for other charities doing similar work.

[00:43:32] Mark Divine: Tangentially related, you know, and I think that’s what you’re talking about. It’s really important that, you know, charitable organizations that are doing this kind of really solid work, have a collaborative approach to raising money and to doing, Doing their service 

[00:43:44] Justin Wren: probably for your organization of mine.

[00:43:46] Justin Wren: I think there’s a new wave of support. It’s always great to, I mentioned a big donor and the plunge, but the lifeblood is the monthly donors. The people that say we believe in you and here’s five bucks a month or here’s 40 bucks a month. 

[00:43:59] Mark Divine: Yeah. Well, people want to see the impact. Yes. They’re tired of seeing money just go up or tired of just doing it for a tax refund or whatever credit.

[00:44:07] Mark Divine: It’s gotta be impactful. So when you can demonstrate an impact like you have and like we do with the Courage Foundation, with our vets, , with post traumatic stress, then it’s inspiring, you know, and I think more and more people want to participate in that. Do you ever let donors, um, participate on the ground?

[00:44:22] Justin Wren: We haven’t yet. We did bring Bernard. We invite him because when he five seconds out of the truck, he was like wind turbine here, solar. It was, , it was awesome. It was perfect. It was perfect. We might do a vision trip with some donors, but also where we go is not, it’s not easy for a lot of people, , from our culture and context and country.

[00:44:46] Justin Wren: That we’re going to build a guest house. And whenever that’s up and running, we’ll probably be bringing like medical missions, teams, some people that have sustainable skills or vocational training that they can pass on. The one thing we try to steer away from is kind of, , maybe the term volunteerism, where it’s like, come over and paint a building and you’re taking the job of the local painter.

[00:45:06] Justin Wren: But we’re, we’re exploring that because I did bring someone, I won’t get into too many details for their sake. And just my memory. It was just one of the worst days, Congo is so unsafe, Uganda is different. Um, and now that we’ve switched our, our work there, but man, we were held at gunpoint. Someone was assaulted in the worst kind of way.

[00:45:26] Justin Wren: And I was right there. It was really, really tough and difficult. We didn’t think we were going to make it out alive, but in Uganda, it’s much safer. And if we have a guest house and can show and celebrate and people experience their beautiful culture, because before we go, I’ll at least share two of three Swahili proverbs that I absolutely love.

[00:45:44] Justin Wren: That changed my life, and one was If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. When I learned it, I never heard it, never read it, never seen it. But that part of community is just how they live. It’s how, it’s who they are. It’s how they breathe. They struggle together. They celebrate together.

[00:46:01] Justin Wren: They suffer together and laugh together and cry together. And they’re never alone. And I think that for me and my depression and addiction and I would say even on the verge of, you know, well, Dr. Amen said, I do have PTSD from some of the things and I didn’t know how to handle it or deal with it. And I tried to do it alone.

[00:46:19] Justin Wren: And that’s why Healy Proverb like definitely changed my life. It’s you want to go fast, but if you want to go far, go together. And the other one is for your audience, like sometimes people maybe hear my story or your story or some of these other incredible guest stories and they think all that. Well, they can do it, but I can’t.

[00:46:37] Justin Wren: I can’t make a difference like that. And I’m like, no, all of us can make a difference and and everyone should try. And the Swahili proverb is, if you think you’re too small to make a difference, try to sleep in a closed room with a mosquito. And it’s funny, but I’ve had malaria and the first time I had it in five days, I lost 33 pounds and I have fought guys six foot seven, six foot eight, six foot nine and fought a guy six foot 10.

[00:47:05] Justin Wren: I finished those guys in the first round, but a mosquito less than a gram in weight and these guys were 265, you know. Like a mosquito almost took my life and if that can make that big of a difference in my life or in the world, like how much more can each one of us individually and then going beyond that collectively make it in the lives of others, like we can make a meaningful impact each one of us.

[00:47:29] Mark Divine: Every one of us. 100 percent agree. We can be the change we want to see at scale now because of conversations like this and technology. So it’s on us to, um, set course to make a difference, but we got to start with ourselves, right? You couldn’t be doing what you’re doing. If you hadn’t done the work to clear the fog and the haze of the darkness and to get over the addiction and to then, you know, find the healing and you, but you found it through service.

[00:47:52] Mark Divine: Yes. That’s a powerful lesson for everyone, right? If you’re stuck in a rut, Turn your attention to someone who needs help. 

[00:47:57] Justin Wren: Yep, definitely. Purpose through service changed or saved my life. And then I would say on the doing the work. Amy, it was something beautiful. We’re having a conversation early on in our relationship and she’s like, Justin, you have to, have to, you must love yourself like your life depends on it.

[00:48:13] Justin Wren: And she asked me why? And I go, she goes, because it does, because it does. And I’m like, wow, that’s really good. And so learning that process over the last three years has been one of the, it might be the biggest gift I’ve ever given myself. It’s like the more I love myself, just those morning meditations practices, I’m charged up to do more in the world and with the nonprofit.

[00:48:38] Justin Wren: And if I was just doing one or the other, I don’t think it would be as impactful or meaningful. 

[00:48:43] Mark Divine: No. We’ve taught self-mastery in service. So initially the self-mastery precedes service, right? Cause you’ve got to build the energy to serve and the positivity and everything. Ultimately they are one in the same.

[00:48:55] Mark Divine: I love that through your own mastery, you’re able to serve others. And through that service, it’s helping you because whatever you put out there comes back to you. Great work, man. You are incredible. I really enjoyed this conversation. It was an honor to meet you, Justin. Fight for the forgotten. Is that the, that’s the charity?

[00:49:11] Mark Divine: What’s the web property? How do people reach out to help you? 

[00:49:14] Justin Wren: Fightfortheforgotten.org or you can go to FFTF.org as well. And if they want to become a monthly donor, we would invite you and say, thank you for joining forces with us. We’re going to make it count. We’re going to make sure that puts love and compassion in action.

[00:49:30] Justin Wren: And so we’re really grateful for the support. If people want to follow me on social media or Instagram, it’s @thebigpigmy and we’re just so grateful. I’m, I’m really honored to have spent this time with you today for so many great things about you and, and it’s, it’s all true now. 

[00:49:45] Mark Divine: That’s really cool to hear.

[00:49:46] Mark Divine: Well, thank you. And ditto. I’m going to go donate a monthly amount and I look forward to being on your email list. That’s, you know, that’s part of it. I want to keep track of you and let me know if there’s anything we can do to help. I’m so grateful for that. Thank you so much. 

[00:50:00] Justin Wren: 2024 is looking really bright.

[00:50:02] Justin Wren: We got a lot of work to do, but it’s going to be fun and all worth it. 

[00:50:06] Mark Divine: I totally agree. All right, Justin. Bless you, my friend. Yeah, you too. Thank you. 

[00:50:10] Justin Wren: Take care.

[00:50:14] Mark Divine: That was an incredible discussion with justin wren justin, thank you so much for your time Huya amazing work that you’re doing and I can’t wait to um, Go to fightforgotten. org and support you and your efforts amazing. Thanks so much Show notes are up at markDivine. com YouTube is on our YouTube channel.

[00:50:33] Mark Divine: You can find information about me and you can reach out to me on Twitter at Mark Divine and on Instagram or Facebook at RealMarkDivine or through my LinkedIn profile. If you’re not on the distro list for my newsletter, Divine Inspiration, it comes out every Tuesday where I disseminate my top of mind information in my blog, as well as show notes from the week’s podcast.

[00:50:52] Mark Divine: a habit and or a practice for the week and a book. I’m reading all sorts of cool stuff coming across my desk. And I think that you would find valuable go to markdivine.com to subscribe and share it with your friends. Thanks so much for my incredible team, Jason Sanderson, and Catherine Divine, who helped produce this podcast and bring incredible guests to you every week.

[00:51:11] Mark Divine: Ratings and reviews are very, very helpful. If you haven’t done so, please consider doing so wherever you listen, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, wherever you listen. So, , it helps stay at the top of the ranks and keeps it relevant, keeps me motivated. So also thanks for being part of the solution in the world and for supporting folks like Justin and his fight for the forgotten and our courage foundation and all the people doing the impact work.

[00:51:33] Mark Divine: It’s really important that we all get involved, do the work ourselves, but also support others in service to humanity. Obviously our global institutions don’t seem to be up for the task. So we had to take matters into our own hands. So why not do that? Awesome. Until next time, this is Mark Divine, your host.

[00:51:50] Mark Divine: Hoo yah.