I Could Lose My Life For Sharing This! | Travis Hunt

This week Granger Smith and Travis Hunt reflect on when they teamed up on a faith-driven mission to help believers in the Middle East create worship music in their own languages and styles. It all began with a simple offer—“Consider me a coin in your pocket.” Despite never working together before, they flew overseas with basic recording gear, a translator, and a deep trust in God.

In safe houses, local musicians—some speaking no English—recorded heartfelt songs. Lyrics were carefully translated and checked for biblical truth. In one moving moment, a singer grieving his son stepped away. Granger, who had also lost a child, wordlessly comforted him. The man returned and finished the song.

Amid tension, spiritual opposition, and the constant call to prayer, worship rose—raw, real, and in native tongues. And through it all, their quiet mantra remained: “To the King.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I can say your name, right, I think you can,
Travis Hunt.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's out there. There was freedom in that well, there's
some freedom and there's some you know, some sadness.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Interesting, I didn't even think about that.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
There is a sadness. I've had to die to what
I wanted.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Wow, you know that that's the one thing we should
start were I'm at you, and then we'll see that
something you've been doing for a very long time has
drastically changed in the three years that I've known you.
We're actually we have we have some friends in the
room today, which is rare but cool, and guys. I

(00:42):
wanted these guys to hear your story along with everyone
on the podcast. But I'll take us back to a
when's the fair July? Yes, July July August, three years ago,
this coming July, and we're playing a concert. I am

(01:02):
on fire for the Lord and on my way out
of music, but no one knows that at the time,
but my band is. They They just laugh at me.
They see me doing these Bible studies and reading the
Bible and and engaging with people, engaging with people talking
about Bible things. And we end up at this fair
Chemist Valley fairs. What is it called? Nope, No, Roseburg,

(01:25):
the Douglas County Fair, Douglas County Fair in Roseburg, Oregon.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, and with Granger Smith as a headliner.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yes, we were headlining. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place. And you
know the hillsides and green green evergreens and and and
hardwoods and rivers running through right right behind where the
fair was. And my guitar player Todd comes on in
that afternoon, Hey, Granger, something you might like out here

(01:52):
in the fair? Like what he goes, There's a booth
out here that says what does they say, Heaven or Hell? Yeah,
it says Heaven or Hell. You know, to question booth.
They call it two Question booth. You might want to
go check it out. And I was like, yes, I do, Yeah,
I jump up. That sounds that sounds amazing. I would
love to go talk to these guys. So on my
way there, I'm walking to this booths in the middle

(02:14):
of the afternoon and this beautiful fair, and I had
been doing so much work with atheist it like the
previous day. I think I was talking all day with
an atheist and and I thought, I think I'm gonna
be an atheist today for this booth. We'll test them
out a little bit now. Whether or not this is

(02:36):
a good thing or not, it's I don't know, probably
not a good thing. You guys, don't judge them. Actually, yeah,
don't judge me for it. This was the wise decision
that I had. I was working with the tools I
had at the time. So I go to this booth
and they're like, you know, hello, sir, how can we
help you? And I was like, I just don't know.
What are you guys? What are you selling? Like, well, actually,

(02:56):
we're not selling anything. We're just here to answer a
simple question. You know, are you going to heaven or Hell?
And I was like, neither exist, so I don't think
I'm going to either one. And they're like, yeah, we
respect your opinion. Can we ask you a few questions?
And I was like is it religious garbage? And they're like,
let me show you some let me let me, let

(03:17):
me ask you a few questions and we could we
can get to your point and find out, you know,
where you're standing. This went on, you know, I'm just
throwing out everything. They were very gracious and very wise,
and uh, they had a heart for me. They loved me.
You know. It was a beautiful thing. And this went
on for In my mind it's thirty minutes, but it

(03:38):
was probably more like fifteen, you know. And then this
girl walks up. I remember she was. She had short
hair and it was spray painted pink and she was
wearing all black. Other than that, I just wanted to talk.
There's something about her and I just thought, oh, like
the game's over now. Yeah, well, she needs to talk.
And so I was like, I'm sorry, guys, let me

(03:59):
let me, let me bring her in here. And they
were like, we're not finished with you. Yeah, And I
was like, seriously, guys, like you need to talk to her.
I think she really wants to talk. And Farren, who
I now know is your son who's now a dear brother,
love him to death. He was like, I'm not finished
with you yet, you guys, can you handle her. We're

(04:20):
going outside.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, we're gonna step outside of the booth, which means
something else in your previous life stepping outside.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
This is a good thing to step outside. And I
went around the side of the booth and I was like, brother,
I'm a Christian. He goes, I don't believe you one bit,
and I said, don't really. He goes, tell me the gospel,
and so we started walking through the Book of Romans,
you know, right, and he goes, oh, so you are okay, okay,

(04:46):
you're believing. What in the world are you doing? And
I was like, it might have been this might have
been unwise. I just I came over here and I've
been talking to this atheist in the last few days
and you guys did great. Let me go introduce myself.
One of the guys, he was brand new to the booth.
I think it was his first year. He was a
little upset and rightly so he was like, what were
you trying to do? And I was like, oh, you're right.

(05:08):
I'm so sorry. I was out of line. And but
then Farron and I connected and he goes, hey, let's
let's take a walk. So we walked through the fair
and we went and looked at the stage and the
guys were kind of sound checking, and we our conversations
were getting deeper and deeper, and I told Farren, probably

(05:29):
the first person outside of my family, and I said, see,
oh this is going away. I'm leaving this yeah, And
he wasn't like what He goes, the Lord does that thing.
You know, the Lord. The Lord does such things, you know.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, he's seen a couple of them, or the Lord
just radically changed people like that.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
And he said, you know, you should meet my dad
one day. I think you'd really like my dad. And
I was like, yeah, you know, maybe I wasn't. I
was not expecting you or anywhere in the vicinity. And
I was like, yeah, I would like that, and he goes, okay.
We exchanged numbers, and I said, let's let's get together
to night. Let's have dinner and we'll have you guys backstage,
and and he said, yeah, I have a friend that's

(06:10):
coming tonight and he's he's not saved, and but he
really loved you. And I said, well, I'm gonna I'm
gonna preach the gospel from the States tonight. And he goes,
that would be that would be really encouraging, that'd be fantastic.
And so I get back on the bus and then
he texted me. He says, hey, Dad's here, you want
to come meet him.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
I was like, okay, so you had like just minutes
away from him, and turned around and came back.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, it was short. It was a short time. I
go down and and there you are, and you brought
someone with you about Chris, Yeah, that's right. And I
met you and I just thought, I like this guy.
You to me, you brought you brought a navy seal

(06:56):
aspect to a believer when sometimes people think of Christians
is mild. And we misuse the word meek all the time.
We completely misuse it as we we use meek as weak.
But here you are, and you're just locked on you know,
your eyes around me. You're probably going let me see

(07:16):
if this guy's a believer. First of all, you want
to know what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah, okay, So
my son had told me you were a believer. I
have seen God do so many insane things. I was praying, Lord,
what is this about? Who is this? What do you want?

Speaker 2 (07:34):
That was seriously, I'm like, okay, we got somebody who's
famous in front of me, engaged.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
What are you doing? What do you want? That's seriously
what was going through my mind.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
So as I was listening, we're engaging, I was trying
to assess, Lord, you got your hand on this guy.
I just need to know why I'm here. So that's
what I was praying about. Why am I here? Why
is this conversation happening. So that's what was going through
my mind.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Well, everything that's going in my mind is I'm talking
to you and you're telling me. And at the time,
kind of going back to the beginning of this conversation,
the world, your name doesn't exist in the world at
this point outside of your own church. Really, your your
name doesn't exist on purpose because you you're international missionary.

(08:18):
I don't even like to say that because that gives
people this this wrong wrong the idea, this wrong view.
So we'll get to that. But you're you're a guy
that travels for very specific reasons and does pretty significant things,
and you don't go for flippiant reasons. It's all. It's

(08:38):
always very calculated, and everything in my spirit was just saying,
go go with them. Yeah, I heard that.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
I was pretty surprised at your response.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
So I said, can I get your number? Uh? Somehow
we exchange numbers, and I said something, you remember it
better than I at all. I remember what I say.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
You said, consider me a coin in your pocket, spend.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Me wherever you will.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, yeah, and then you remember what I said. No,
And I think someone was with me, but I can't
remember who. It was, but I remember saying, don't say
that to me. Those are my words. I remember, don't
say that. You know, actually, do not say those things
to me, because now you know what I mean. Because
when somebody says that and they really mean it, I

(09:26):
know there is a great work ahead and it's far
beyond anything we've ever imagined. Yeah, and so yeah, you're like, no, no,
I'm serious, I'm serious. Use me if the Lord has
a place, use me anywhere you see fit. Consider me
a coin in your pocket.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
I remember asking there in that night, I said, is
your dad serious about that? I mean, is he one
of these guys that like says things to talk? Yeah?
And he goes, I've never known him to say anything
that actually didn't happen. He's like, Okay, he's that kind
of guy. Later, a few weeks go by, Farren and
I connected again through the loss of a son. We

(10:03):
both have in common loss of a son. I'm not
sure if he realized it at the time. I certainly
didn't realize it with him. But we connected later and
you know, talked for hours on the phone over several times. Yeah,
and got closer and closer throne than I did. But
I didn't know what was coming with you. Neither did I.
It was only a few months. Yeah, it's not very long. Hey, Granger,

(10:28):
it's Travis.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Well, first of all, that's surreal for me. I'm gonna
call Granger Smith. I mean, that's just so you know,
that's just a little unusual.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
So I call you. Yeah, Hey, Granger, And what am
I about to say? I have not spoken about in
public at all. You and I spoke before we recorded.
We think that this is probably open information now.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
I think that at this point because of what's happened
through social media and actually what happened in our trip
to the country. I don't know if you're going to
name it, but the trip to the country we went in,
I realized at this point I'm no longer hidden, and
so what I have to do now needs be done publicly,
and someone else has to do the work I was

(11:12):
doing because you can't.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
You can't have a.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Social media or an electronic footprint and do what we
were doing.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
You can't.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
And it's getting harder and harder with AI anyway, So
at this point, yeah, I think we're probably okay. I
think we should keep some of the details quite.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
I'll go like minimal details.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
But yeah, we can talk about the idea of it
and what happened.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
So what happened. A lot of people that have been
following me for a long time might remember this time
when I kind of went dark and said I'm going
some places and you know you won't hear from me. Well,
that goes back to this phone conversation, which at the
time you were either t or another name that we
used as a nickname, which we don't want to use here,
which we won't. I won't use that name, but but

(11:59):
travel was not a name. Really, I didn't call you
Travis for at least a year into our relationship. Yeah,
not because it was necessarily bad and right place it
was a good It was a habit. I didn't want
to say by having you were gs. Yes, yes, And
so he says T at the time says to me,
we're talking on on on on closed you know, encrypted

(12:24):
and messaging. We're not we never talk on regular phone lines.
He goes, can you record an album? I was like, yeah,
I've done that. I've done it. Yeah, I've done it
for years, And you go, can you record an album
outside of the studio? Yeah? Sure, he was, can you
do it anywhere in the world. Yeah, sure can. Yeah,

(12:44):
I said, I actually have the equipment in my backpack
almost at all times because I have a radio show.
I carry it right, you know, Okay, have an idea.
In fact, you we might have continued to another time.
You might have said, I'll get back to you. Yeah,
But either way, what happened was you realize that there
was a need in your ministry. From the multiple facets

(13:06):
of your ministry that you were doing with your team,
you realize there was a there was a gap in
worship music for certain cultures around the world, with certain languages,
but didn't have it. Yeah, the great, the.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Great need is and it has been missed by Western
missionaries for so long.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Is that a lot?

Speaker 2 (13:24):
And you see this when you travel in the Third World.
A lot of the churches are singing our songs translated
into their language. It's our hymns, it's.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Our worship songs, our choruses. There are are words the way.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
We say things, and they're not their heart language, they're
not their style. There's just no connection. But they think
that's Christianity, and so we must. We want to say
these good things about God, so we must use these
words and sing these songs. These are spiritual songs.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
And in fact we're European, we're Western. I mean, the.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
Messianic or Jewish worship songs are nothing like our songs
because they have a completely different heart, language and the
way they the music that they that they enjoy. And
so the problem was that I personally, and I know
there's a lot of people that feel this way, feel

(14:29):
like the people should be able to sing songs to
God the way they sing, imagine that that the worship
would be something that they would be doing with their
family and their friends, and that there's a lot of
amazing songwriters out there who have just no connection to anybody,

(14:52):
and how do we get their music to their people?
So when they're singing and the songs are bursting out
of their mouth and they're gatherings, it's their songs. Yeah,
a new song, you know, Revelation says a new.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Song Revelation five. And you you recognized that there were
certain language groups that didn't have it, and certain churches
that had none, none of their own music to sing
and write zero. That is a major gap that the
Lord put on your heart to fill. And somehow that
coin was in your pocket from me. Yeah, I'm like, oh,

(15:25):
I got to I got someone who knows how to
make music. Yeah. So the first plan was to go
somewhere else. I think it was somewhere in Europe, and
we were going to go do this in Europe, and
I'm like, you know, I've still got a tour schedule,
i still still have a job at the time doing music.
And then I was like, oh yeah, wow, okay, Lord,
maybe you have prepared me all these years for this,

(15:48):
like for you know, I thought making music was for me,
for exalting myself and getting people like me. Maybe it
never was about me at all. Maybe it was just
my recording skills. Yeah, it's just the computer and learning
how to set up a microphone. And then that changed.
That actually fell through, and I thought, oh that's a bummer,

(16:08):
you know, it fell through, and then it so we
went a little deeper. It came up here, if Europe
doesn't work, we'll go a little deeper. It was actually
into the Middle Eastern area, into the sandbox. Yeah, let's go.
Let's go into the sandbox and do this. You're ready
And I'm like, yes, I'm ready, got tickets. I'm thinking

(16:32):
maybe this, maybe this will fall through. Sure, you know,
I've got a couple of microphones, cables, computer.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
And let's let's remember you and I have never done
anything together, never, And so you're believing that this guy
with this idea isn't just a nutcase, but he's going
to follow through a little bit.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
So you're thinking same thing with me.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
I was like, I can't believe he's going to do this.
It looks like he might do this. This is great
and if not, we'll record him with our phones.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
But you know, yeah, so I get to uh said
country land. You picked me up with with one of
the guys that we worked with, and late night at
the airport, we came into the you know, really a
safe house. We could say that, you know, it was
stayed in a missionary safe house. And I had been
to the Middle East before, to Kuwait and Iraq. Right,

(17:24):
but this but but once again, that was like the
Lord was preparing me. I'd been in Iraq three times, right,
Why did I do that? Oh? The Lord was getting
me in a rhythm for something. All these little things
started adding up. I was having dreams about the Middle East,
I mean, like wildly vivid, the kind of dreams that
we talked about this yesterday, the kind of dreams that
your brain didn't generate, right, right. You know, there are

(17:46):
dreams the Lord very rarely in your life. Does it
happen some people more than others. But there are times
when you wake up in a cold sweat with chills,
your down, your your entire body, and you go, what
just happened in my dream? Yeah, those kind of dreams
about what we were about to do. So we get there,

(18:07):
We get to the safe house and woke up the
next morning early, and we walked to a coffee place, uh,
and got a turkey croissant. Because there is, by the way,
that is important.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
If you do travel with me, you must go to
a coffee place.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Coffee very important. Tray, yes, very important. Uh. So we go,
we kind of get and it was a beautiful thing.
You know. We go to this coffee house and and
you're like, okay, we we will pray. They're saying this
low you know, we will pray, but we're gonna say
the King, and we're gonna keep our eyes open. We're
not gonna bow our heads and see your hats on.

(18:47):
We leave your hats on. We're holding our croissant. Sandwiches,
looking at each other, going, isn't the king good? Isn't
the king good? Yes to the King, to the king,
you know that was those That's that's a beautiful prayer. Yeah,
if you think about what that means, that's a prayer
that that was said many times in the Book of
Acts and during that era in the early Church under persecution.

(19:10):
Keep your eyes open, your head up, fill your heart
with rejoicing for the Lord, and he sees, and he sees. Yeah,
so we we we start. We ended up recording five
different languages, five songs, so twenty five songs.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Right, but just posted actually, but I don't want to
give the website.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
And we'll still do that. But meanwhile, you and the
rest of the team are working on your own things. Right,
So you said, okay, Granger, you're good. Okay, we're out,
you know, well.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Way a second, wait a second that you're yeah. I
don't know if you're going to give the details. But
he makes his own studio by flipping sofas on edge
and shoving these pads on top of the making a
little microphone areas. And I remember walking in thinking this,
I took pictures of it. I'm like this is funky,
but you got the sound you were looking for, and
we had because of the concrete walls, right, it was

(19:59):
just the echo was a problem and street noise and
you're hot.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yeah, it was so hot. I don't think there's any
air conditioning in that room. No, we had to turn
off recording so loud.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
It was just sweating and and oh yeah, yeah, I
remember that.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
And I go at one point, I go upstairs and
you guys are teaching pastors. You're teaching them to read
and and to teach the Bible accurately. And you guys
are kind of sitting in your chairs and you're going, Nope,
that's not what the Bible says. No, And they you know,
these guys, and they're from all over the Middle East
and India area regions, multiple regions, and they're like, go

(20:37):
back to it again, go back And I'm like, whoa,
this is cool. They go back down and continue recording.
So I I have a translator, thank goodness. A couple
of these guys, a couple of these musicians cannot speak
any English at all, right, and but we're wanting to
make sure that what they're singing is good. Yeah, biblical, biblical,

(20:58):
So We're constantly going back checking lyrics, making sure these
these things add up, and a couple of times we're like,
well let's not say it that way. How do you
say this? And then translate back. But the musicians were amazing.
The singing was beautiful. I learned quickly that the you know,
my style would be let's do it and go back

(21:19):
and fix mistakes. But we would do it and they
would go I'd say, let's go back and tell them
we're going to listen for mistakes. Tell them. He says,
he didn't make a mistake. So it was. It was

(21:39):
such such a beautiful thing. There was there was I
remember there was a moment though when I don't know
if you remember this or not, but one of our
singer songwriters was singing and he had to take a
break and he wasn't sure if he can come back
and finish the project. It was just he was overcome
with grief as he was singing these songs. He was
overcome with them motion and and heaviness, and he went outside.

(22:03):
He was just kind of standing on the balcony and
the translator comes back. I goes, I don't I don't
know if we're gonna get him. He's he's he's pretty broken,
he's a broken place. And I said, you might ask
what's going on? And he said, this is a pretty
heavy story here. He lost his son. And I was like,

(22:25):
I said, well, will you please go tell him that
I've also lost a son. He goes you have? I said, yes,
will you tell him? He goes back out, but it
tells him looks back at me. I stood up. We
have no words in common, right, I just put my hand,
you know, right around the back of his shoulder and neck,

(22:47):
and I just looked at him, just eye to eye,
and our eyes were just glazed over. Yeah, you know,
there was no words, just yeah. And he put his
hand on me, and suddenly we were brothers united in
something that was deeper than we could ever imagine. And
he came back in when we finished the song. Yeah. Well,

(23:11):
it's incredible even talking about this, because I haven't got
to talk about these things. Constantly interrupted, constantly by the
loud speakers outside calling for prayer, the the Islamic call
for prayer. Yes, we got to stop now, got to stop.
Just blaring call for prayer constantly woke us up in
the morning. And it was a good time to get

(23:36):
four am. He's calling, you know, and and not only
one loud speaker, but they're kind of all the different
little moll and it just became part of our rhythm
where it's just it was like i'll say it this way,
and I don't, I should say it this way. It
was like the enemy was always always right around the corner,
you know, just going I'm watching you. Yeah, that's what

(23:58):
it felt like.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, So that's the worship of God went on, and
it has been posted in the places that are safe,
and the national churches and the indigenous churches are using
it and they are singing it. And we've even had
seminars where we bring in worship leaders and teach them
their own songs. Yes, because they've never heard these songs,
but they're their songs and their songwriters. And so that

(24:24):
has occurred. And I have videos of small groups which, yeah,
singing these worship songs in small secret Christian groups that
this guy wrote and that was recorded and they got
off of YouTube. And that's I'll talk a little bit
about the YouTube thing if I can.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
I mean, we were, you know, security better than not.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, we were gonna put them. We were going to
give them to them through secret electronic means. And after
a while, the the people who make the decisions all
to say that the inside people in these countries said,
you can't can't do that anymore. If you show up
with these and there is no other place on planet

(25:07):
Earth you can get them, they will already know you're
a Christian, so they said, and this is where we're
at now. The best thing you can do is post
them for the whole world. And then if you have
them on your device, you could say I just found
this place. I found this and I downloaded this. No,
I didn't have a secret meeting with a secret believer
from a secret country.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, I got it off the internet. This is right here. Look,
i'll show you this place. Now.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
They may still be beaten, but they're less likely to
be tortured to find out who their contacts are.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah. Well, one time I was in Tennessee in an
uber and I asked the guy where he's from. He's
from one of those countries. I ask him what language
he speaks. He's from. He speaks one of those five languages.
And I said, oh, you're you're Muslim. He said yes,
And I said, hi, I have some music I would
love to play for you pulled up you know yeah,

(26:01):
and started playing it. And instantly, first of all, you're thinking,
how could you possibly know my language? Yeah, my language
press playing he's what you know? My culture? And then
and I said do you know what it's saying? And
he goes, yes, yes, I know. What is that? I

(26:22):
was like, here, I'll get your number, man, I'll give
you this right now. Yeah. It was like, wow, this
is beautiful. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. So then from
there we made a jump into a country. I don't
know if we want to say we don't have to.
I don't know that we should say. But it's still
in the region. It's a very hot region. We went

(26:43):
to a country where you are not supposed to go
and we went there. Yes, and we thought we were
being sneaky.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, we had a plan and it was a great
plan and it should work, and we had a lot
of professionals involved so that it was a legitimate reason
for being there, and we were just kind of doing exploration.
You know, is this something that can fly? Is can
we start a small business kind of a thing that
is legitimate and then employ underground believers, feed them and

(27:13):
then teach them at the same time. So that's kind
of the plan. Can we do this we show up
at That's when I realized I was uncovered. At point
in time when we arrived, they were really interested in you.
You were the main contact when we arrived. But then
at one point, at a table about twice as long
as this or three times as long as this, we

(27:34):
were sitting down and eating something and drinking something else something.
We got very sick on, Yeah, very sick.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
And they typed in my home town.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
And the second picture of my hometown on their Google
photos was me at the pulpit preaching.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
I just kind of shrunk back, and suddenly I didn't
want to talk anymore because now this looks really bad,
really really bad, and it got.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
It got I felt sketchy.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
I think that we were wise and that we didn't engage,
But we had some strange interrogations that occurred after that. Yes,
you specifically, because I got quieter and quieter, but they
kept saying, what exactly do you do?

Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, one of the guys, what do you do? You
know you would see him in a movie and be
he's just that guy. Guy's a scary guy man, mob boss,
kind of guy. And we had been saying he was
a guy that drove around with machine gun back this truck.
But anyways, yeah, which we later learned, don't don't ride
in the truck with the machine gun right in the

(28:46):
other truck truck.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
We learned, don't ride in the truck that's in front of.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
The machine gun. So they knew that you and the
other guy that was with us were investors, business investors,
and all that was correct. What I was, that was
all correct. The amount that you were. We didn't have
to say that. And then you talked a lot about
ranching and chicken farming, and but you also just knew.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
A lot of information about a lot of way too
much information about everything.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
This mob boss guy at one point at dinner goes,
tell me again, what is it you do just like that? Yeah,
And me and the other guy, well two other guys
were yeah. Red flags went up, Oh man, this is
not this is not this dinner is not going. Well.
That's when we all knew, without saying it, that this
was bad, that we can't come. We can't return to

(29:37):
this country like we thought we might not in the
plan we had. Uh, we go back and at the hotel.
The American flag which is flying there is now flying
upside down, right, it's like pictures of it. That was
not settling. We thought behind the multiple barriers for explosives,

(29:58):
so we have to go through multi get into the
hotel lobby. Yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't No one makes
a mistake to fly the American flag upside down. No,
it's intentional. It was a message.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Oh well, you know, as a message because you actually
mentioned it to the concierge and it didn't get fixed.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Yes, I did. For all those people I listening right now,
I actually said, hey, this might not be a big
deal to you, but that's my flag out there and
it's upside down, and just just wanted to bring it up.
Oh it is, yes, yes, yes, we will tell, We
will tell. Yeah till management So sorry about that. Yeah yeah, yeah,

(30:39):
nothing happened. Yeah, and then again didn't get changed. We
we got out of there. We didn't know we got
back to the airport, we didn't know if we would
actually make it back into the the host country. But
we did. I mean we were. It was good out.
It was Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
I've had a few close calls in my life and
all that. Oh, nothing was openly done. I had I
was not comfortable, spiritually, not comfortable prepared for anything. When
we were in the hotels, we didn't talk about and
then we decided this before we went in. There was
no conversation about our faith, about the Bible. We didn't

(31:19):
open a Bible literature. We are surveilled the entire time.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
There's someone listening. Yeah, you just you just It was just.
There wasn't any code words, We didn't do anything. We
were just what we were.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Because they were watching continuously. But I was pretty happy
when we left.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
I was very happy. It looks like I'm going home.
I had a Louis Lamore Old Cowboy book reading. You know.
That's as far as exposure as I wanted to get.
My phone had like no pictures, just very boring pictures
of my dog and things like that. We were fully
prepared that we were going to get some kind of interrogation.

(31:59):
But we got out of there and then we learned
a lot from that trip, a lot. I learned a
lot too, And that's the first trip we took together.
It was crazy, was that the first trip. That was
our first trip together. Man, when we got close. Yeah, yeah,
if you want to get a hold of me for
any reason. Go to cameo dot com slash granger Smith.

(32:21):
It's a great way to get someone a gift that
you don't know what to get. It's a video message
from me. Basically, you message me and say, hey, can
you tell my brother happy birthday? Can you tell my
wife happy inniversary? Or can you give me a word
of encouragement or maybe even a prayer? Go to cameo
dot com slash granger Smith. Fill that out and it
comes right to my phone. I read what you want

(32:41):
me to say. I could add libit. I take my phone,
put it on selfie mode, shoot a quick video saying hey, Bob,
Cindy wanted me to tell you a happy anniversary, and
you know whatever you woman to say, and then I'll
send you that video message and then you give it
to Cindy's It's a great little tool. Using this for
a long time. Cameo dot com slash granger Smith. Have

(33:04):
you heard about ee Fest yet? I need to tell you.
It's May ninth and tenth at the EEE Farm. We're
gonna have a truck show, We're gonna have a mud bog,
lots of good food, lots of people from YE Nation
will be there, and I'm even gonna do some kind
of live podcast. Uh don't know how that's gonna look yet,
but we're gonna do a live audience, live podcast, answer questions,

(33:25):
gonna have Amber there, most of my team and my
brothers will all be there, and you know, we'll be
at the EEE Farm, so you get to come. It's
open to the public completely and you get to come
and hang out with us at the EEE Farm. I
think it's gonna be so much fun. And here's the surprise.
Saturday night, May the tenth, I'm actually playing a concert,
my full band, all the crew. It's it will be

(33:47):
the only concert we do the entire year. So you
don't want to miss this. I mean, this is gonna
be If you're part of EU Nation or you want
to be part of EU Nation, you got to check
this out. You go to ee E fest dot com
for all your info. I'm looking at it right now.
If you're wondering the price for the full weekend, it's
seventy nine bucks for a ticket. If you just want

(34:08):
to go to one day, like a single pass on
Friday is thirty nine bucks, and a single pass on
Saturday is only fifty nine bucks, So if you want
to go to this concert fifty nine bucks, kids are
cheaper than that. And then there's all kind of like
vip packages ways to get your truck in there. We
could sit on your tailgate of your own truck. It's
going to be a really, really good time. I'm so

(34:30):
excited about this once again. Ye Fest coming May ninth
and tenth. Go to ee dot com or eeefest dot
com for more details. We have since traveled to many
countries after that, some we can't mention again, but we
have done done some crazy work together. Israel twice. We've

(34:50):
done that twice. Well before we jump onto Israel, let's
stay in that country. We have and you have been
a part of this in a big way. Brother.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
We have rescue believers in that country who were being
hunted to be executed. Multiple families are currently spread around
the world in safe locations because we have helped them
to find a way out, and some of their stories

(35:19):
are super hair raising. But that same country we were not,
we weren't able to go in, and I'm still in
contact with leaders in that country and we're still helping them,
and I can't really tell you the projects because it
would reveal the leader. But some of the key leaders
have been uncovered, especially at the fall of another country

(35:40):
which you could probably figure it out. There was a
removal of American military, but I'm not going to say
that name. They helped them, So that country we were
in was helping this other country.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Which was in worse shape. Everyone knows what we're talking about,
and yeah, they do it.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, but it's not as easy to search my AI
if we don't use the names. So anyways, they they
got uncovered and had to flee for their own lives.
So it just sort of dominoed out. And even currently
your translator, it's currently in that place where all the
mosques were. He's there right.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
Now and.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Working hard for the Lord in an amazing way. But
I would just say, would you pray for him. He's
he's got a very legitimate reason and we've applied for
asylum in the US. But it's not a good environment
right now, you know, with all of the illegal stuff
that's going on the immigration and all the response. But
he he's a real he's got a real shot if

(36:41):
somebody will actually look at his his paperwork.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
So remember to pray for him. Yeah, yeah, we're talking
about the guy that was the translator that we're not said.
The guy lost his son and we had you know,
we got really close to the translator and I and
he's a great brother and he is he's heavily persecuted
in that country because you cannot return. Even within the
Middle East, those countries are prejudiced against each other, and

(37:05):
that's what's going on. He's from another country. They don't
like that other country. Racism. We don't know much about racism.
Do you want to know racism?

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Go to the Middle East and watch the way they
treat each other Sunni's and shes and you know, this
clan and that clan and this sect and they there
is racism, enormous racism. And then ask, okay, I'm really
going to go out on a limb, ask the Arabs
how they feel about the Africans, and you're like, wow,
there is real racism that occurs.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah. So there are countries in between that we won't mention,
but we have done different things there. But but then Israel,
we could we can openly talk about Israel because I've
actually filmed that and put that on social media. Another
glaring aspect of racism is right there in that country.
Oh man.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Yeah, there's real there's real ethnic hatred.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Yeah. So we've taken two trips together, two of them
both of them were last year. You took a trip
which I have FOMO about without me recently. But there
are multi layered reasons while we have done those those
trips to Israel, and one of the reasons that it's

(38:21):
it's a place we could return to is because of
the turmoil the war. Yeah, there is a softening in
the country of hearts that are more willing to listen.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, there's some amazing stuff that happened. So, having been
you know, to Israel a few times prior to our
first trip together, we've tried to do you know, I
actually I don't know how much we can talk about
because some of what we would like to talk about
may not be acceptable to the count to that country
the conversation. So we have been shared the gospel absolutely

(38:59):
with people. But I have just been amazed at the
softening that occurred. I have one specific incident which I
think I can say, which totally blew me away. And
if I don't give any dates, probably no one will
get in trouble. So we're there and because of the war,
everybody's fear of death. Psalm ninety twelve teach us a

(39:19):
number of our days that we may gain a heart
of wisdom. Right, And in Ecclesiastes seven it says, I'd
rather go to the house of morning than in the
house of feasting, for that is the end of all man,
and the living will take it to heart.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
So death is what creates a softening in your heart.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
It should can create a softening in your heart towards Okay,
what happens next, Yes, it's that breaking point that we
were talking about. That moment we're like, wow, I'm at
the bottom, like literally I could die tomorrow and so unbelievable.
So we're walking up to the jaffagain. It's my favorite story.
It may be for the next twenty years, because I've

(39:54):
tried so hard to share the Gospel with Jewish people.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
And they're hard like rock, you know, and like just
that if you had enough. Well, it's Israel, it's Christian Disneyland.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
So they're sick of every type of Christian, every strange
and odd Christian showing up and doing strange and odd
things in their backyard. And they're just sick of it.
But we're there and there's nobody. There isn't a single
other anybody. We opened up so many sites. They're like, hey,
could we see this amazing, like when nobody's been here
for months? Yeah, can we We had to bribe one

(40:26):
priest with it.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
What was it? A peach? Oranges? An orange? Yeah, from Jericha. Yeah,
like this is the best orange in the world. It's
a Jericho orange.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
And he finally came back and he almost didn't open it,
but he did open the caves of Bethlehem for us.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
But anyways, I digress. So I'm we're at the.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Jaffa Gate and we're leaving and we have these little pins,
these little leather pins that we had made. They just
have their very simple non Christian. It's got the Star
of David with a heart in them. It's a little
lapel pin and they're really classy. And so we have
these and we're giving them out and praying for people.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Can we pray for you?

Speaker 2 (40:59):
They want us to pray for them. They are open
to the Christians praying for them. They're open to a
couple of things, but that's one of them. But so
we're standing off. You were there, right, We're standing off
at the Java gate and there's like twenty military people
at the Java Gate and there's a civilian outfront going
blah blah.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
We're talking away and we're just looking at this.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Now there's a lot of military and Jerusalem. This is
when rockets were going over and there was a lot
of activity and there was terrorist attacks in the city,
knife explosions. Last trip, there was explosions when I was there.
They blew up four buses right where we were. But anyways,
so there's military movement and we come later on to

(41:40):
find out that there is a guard change occurring in Jerusalem,
and so these are twenty or twenty five officers who
were overseeing the new recruits who are now gonna take
Jerusalem proper and guard it. And they're shifting out for
the war and God and so they're getting orientation.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
So we didn't know any of.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
This, and I didn't know they were officers, you know,
I just here they are all standing there and we
have these pins, and everybody had been so open to
let us pray for him, and so we're just kind
of standing at a distance.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
I remember, we're all kind of huddled and we are
we are we stand out.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
We are clearly not them, and nobody else is there
but us. And they're standing out there and this woman
comes back and turns out she's the commanding officer. And
she comes back and she.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Says, why are you here? Good English? Why are you here?

Speaker 2 (42:30):
And we're like, we tell her, well, we want to
pray and let you guys know that the you may
feel like the whole world's against you, but the Christians
are not. We love you, we're praying for you, we
want to encourage you.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
We're praying for.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Your safety and for peace for this land. And she's like, oh,
it's wonderful. Do you want to talk to my officers?
And I said, this is one of those out on
a limb. I said, well, the only thing I really
want to talk to your officers about is Jesus. Now
that is not the good plan, but that's just a
totally supernatural event.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
I remember. She kind of turns her head sideways and
looks at me and she goes, you want to tell
my officers about Jesus. And I'm thinking that's the end
of that. I said yeah. She goes, come come, and
so here we come.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
We're literally going to go stand at the Jaffa gate
in Jerusalem to twenty officers, and she's just given me
permission to tell them about Jesus. She brings him around
and she kind of does a little miniature introduction and
the civilian. Turns out, the civilian did not like it.
She was some sort of an administrator.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Was very I'll tell that story after. Yeah, okay, that
was my issue. Very unhappy with the event.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
So we go around and I remember the basics of
what I shared. It was from Isaiah. I said, I
want you to know, first of all, we love you,
we're praying for you.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
And we believe your Bible. We believe your Bible. You
don't believe your Bible.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah, I started quoting Isaiah fifty three and I said,
who else died for your sins and rose from the dead?

Speaker 1 (44:02):
Who?

Speaker 2 (44:02):
And I just began going through the prophecies of Isaiah,
which is the irrefutable proof that Jesus is the Messiah.
I mean all the way down to the fact that
we can prove that the oldest copy that we have
is hundreds of years before Jesus arrives, It wasn't changed,
and Jesus is the Messiah.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
It's still on display. It's amazing. Yeah. So all that
to say that, So I told him.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
That I believe your Bible and it's tall true, and
I believe all the prophets. And I remember as I
was gospeling some woman, I didn't turn because I didn't
want to point her out because I heard a female
voice from this side. And as I was preaching from
Isaiah fifty three and then Javagate to twenty of officers

(44:45):
of the idf unbelievable story, I remember hers.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
I remember her. I heard this under her breath. Yes,
shoe ahmasiuk. And then I said, that's right, yeshoe ahamashiak,
which is Hebrew for Jesus the Messiah. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
And then things start to get a little fall apart
up this point, and we give them, give them.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Uh. I can't tell you what.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
We give them pins and other things because I think
the other things are illegal.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
So we give them pins and we pray for them,
and then we leave. But now you can tell the
rest of okay. So when you said I want to
tell them about Jesus, and she was like, you know,
turned her head. She said, yes, there was another lady
the civilian. There was like some kind of administrator and
some kind of superior in this situation. She was sort
of running. She was more like the government of the street.

(45:35):
And she was like, you cannot tell you no religion
could be talked about, and you started. I turned to
her and I was like, so where are you from?
That's right. You totally engaged her. And she was like
kind of looking around, and she was like, I am
from the North. And I was like, tell me about what.
I just came from the North. So I'm from Texas.

(45:57):
You know, we have these very just don't look at
that looking around, like looking around my face, and you know,
I was thinking, hurry up, Travis, telling the god. I
remember that. That's right. You shielded me so I could
have that window. And you were just finished and she
could say, hey, s you cannot say these things. You
cannot say these and you're like, oh, yes, ma'am, we

(46:18):
won't say anything else. There's another moment on that trip. No,
it was the second trip we took to Israel that
there was there's a thousand stories. Is this the cucumbers?
It's not the cucumbers. That's an incredible story too. Maybe
we should tell that also, well, you and I could
have a podcast every day of the week and for

(46:39):
a year and probably still not have enough content or
still cover too much content. But there was there was
a moment maybe you're not even thinking of. We found
up in the north. There were churches there and they
were almost all bad. So it's fair to say bad
meaning I was not sure that their pastors were saved
exactly exactly. So we go to visit one of these churches.

(47:04):
We're looking. We're hunting for our believers that are leaders.
That's what you could say that right in a nutshell,
we're hunting for We're looking. We're looking for young men.
We want to help them. We want we want someone
that could be that we could pull aside and say, hey,
we could provide training, We want to support you and
your church. We didn't find us, which is unfortunate. So

(47:26):
we had to go to the ground level, which is fine,
but that's what yea.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
So couldn't find any leaders in that position, but we
did find believers, that's.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Right, So we had to start at the believer level.
But regardless, we are at one of these church leaders
will call him a pastor with a very loose term
as a very loose term. We're at his house with
several of his co leaders. I don't dare want to
say elder in this scenario, but they are in the
Christian side of the faith. They're not Jewish, they're not Muslim,

(47:55):
They're they're proclaiming that they're Christians. They have a regular church,
they have a church service, and we go there and
they are We're having every house we'd go into, we
would usually have some kind of coffee, like Arabic coffee.
Were these people Arabic or were they they're Arabic. They're Arabic, Yes,
so they would have Arabic coffee, and so if you

(48:17):
cook cookies and sweets things like that. We're sitting around,
it's hot, you know, the windows are open, and these
guys are just telling us how awesome they are, Yes,
how awesome the church is.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
They're going to plant multiple sites to get multiple countries.
Blah blah blah, were so good, you know, just we
have so many conversions, and you know, all the blow
we're going to build a bigger building.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
And we had been a long day, you know, we
had walked a lot, our feet were tired. We're hearing
this guy tell these Americans, how awesome his church was.
Maybe so we could give them money or something, which
we weren't there to do that anyway with these guys,
but but maybe they think Westerners and you're silent, you're

(49:02):
not saying a thing. And I'm like, Travis is either
about to fall asleep, literally sitting in his chair taking
I was praying. I really wanted a word from the Lord. Yeah,
and I but then I thought, most likely he's up
to something. And he's praying not not about you know,
not necessarily for this man. But but Travis is more
more so praying for a word in the money. You

(49:25):
want to say, why why are we here? God? You
know that, what are we here for? And then you go,
can I can I say something? Can I excuse me? Guys?
Can I say something? And by the way, we have
a translator. They're speaking in Arabic, but they actually they
also knew English, and there's a translator, and and Travis says,

(49:47):
they were like, yes, yes, yes, speak speak. He said,
will you translate this? And they're like, we could speak
English very well, sir, And you go, I'm not talking
about can you translate it into English? Can you trans
into Arabic? And they're like, what's this guy talking about?

Speaker 2 (50:05):
And that was mainly because I didn't think the person
that you're about to refer to English.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Were right about that. So I'm like on the edge
of my seat, like what Because I know Travis maan,
I'm like, it's about to be funny whatever. This is
gonna be good.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
You know.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
I've like, I've been in a lot of countries at
this one, like a lot of really sketchy situations with you.
So I'm like, well, this is gonna be good. He
has the floor you want to? I think you should
tell the story what happened next? No, no, I like
your storytelling, he said. Travis says, do you know who
Jesus says is the greatest to his disciples? And they're

(50:44):
like and I'm thinking, oh, it's good because they're talking
about how great they are. Yeah, they're battling with who's
the best in the room. And Travis says, the one
who serves? Is that what you said? What are the
one who serves? And he goes, who in this room
do you think is the greatest? Right? All right? A sudden,

(51:07):
the sweet little old woman carrying a tray.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Feeding all of us refreshments. The entire time, all these
important people are sitting on these couches drinking their stuff.
She just making sure everything's okay for everyone here.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
And when that gets translated back in Arabic, who do
you think is the greatest here? She stops, puts her
head DOWNE Travis looks right at her. Thank you for
loving us, for serving us. She started weeping. She was broken.

(51:46):
She broke and weeped. We come to find out it
was her. She had been on her knees every day
for these men, for the church, for the community, for
the families. It was her. She held the church together.
She was holding it together. It was by her prayers.
She was the one that was that was that was
broken and had a delight for the Lord. And yet

(52:07):
she was the one you called it out perfectly. That
was pretty amazing. They were her voice, her weeping. She
spoke no English, and I a moment for me. The
rest of them looked like they had just swallowed a slug. Yes,
that's true, and then they quickly were like, we got

(52:30):
to kind of it's time to go.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
I got some important ministry to do. But I was
able to pray with her, yes, which was really special.
But yeah, and we come to find out they, you know,
that culture, they didn't care about her. No, culture doesn't
really elevate women.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
It was beautiful. Uh, we mentioned it. We got to
say the cucumber story. You said, okay, yeah, just so
let me tell you just the background. You know it.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
But for everybody who's listening, the background to the Gaza
Lebanon Iran crisis. And at one point Israel was fighting
on seven fronts, which is pretty crazy.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
Just think about that.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
And what's happened is there's no tourism, and everybody in
Israel lives off a tourism, everybody in some ways tied
to tourism, and so their economy has been utterly crushed.
I would probably relate it to the Great Depression of
the US.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
It's that bad.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Nobody you don't hear about it. Nobody's talking about it.
But when you have no income for the country, everybody suffers,
and including the people who are in the West Bank,
the Palestinians, if you will, A lot of them, A
number of them, was it one hundred thousand or some

(53:55):
really a large number have work visas and so this
person gets a work visa in the family, they end
up coming over to work in Israel proper.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
They make a good wage.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
They bring it back and they support three or four
or five families one worker, because you make so much
better money in Israel proper. Yes, they were all when
the war started, all visas were dropped. You couldn't so
nobody could leave the West Bank to work. Everybody lost
their job, so there's no income. I gotta be careful.

(54:30):
I don't want to make the Palestinian authority hate my guts,
but I'll just say that the Israeli government is giving
a stipend, it's a survival stipend to their people. Nobody's
doing well, but they're living. They have food, that's probably.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
They have food.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
They have electricity. The other side not so much zero
in fact, And so the people inside the West Bank
terrible starvation.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Yeah, it's horrible. They're starving. We saw it.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
And they're literally could take a rock and throw it
over the guard station and hit dirt that if they
were there, they'd have enough to eat.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
It is so bad.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Anyway, So we're in that area and we're just praying
with people, and that's about all I'm gonna talk about,
praying with people and loving on people. And we're with
this woman who is living with her mom and raising
her son. No men, we saw that a lot, no
men involved in the families. Just women surviving in groups,

(55:42):
groups of women surviving in huddles. And we're praying for her.
And I just say, you know, I'm just trying to
assess is it as bad as I think it is?

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Because you know, they they're.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Very stoic, very stoic, don't want to show, don't want
to be ashamed.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
I mean, they're offering us food. You know, well water.
I think you drank some of that one. That's probably
why you got sick.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
But anyways, they're offering us that, and we're sitting and
talking and praying and hearing their stories. And I said, well,
you know, I think I said, do you have enough
to eat? And she's looking at me, you remember she's
looking and she goes just barely wiggles her head because

(56:29):
she doesn't want to say we're hungry.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
It's shameful.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
She just kind of wiggles her head slightly. I said,
do you mind if I look? Now, that is very American.
Nobody in accept a European, but especially in American.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
It's going to be.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
As uncaring as that, but I did it for a
reason and it had great benefit.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
But she can't say no. They're in their culture. She
can't say no.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
So I want to go look because I'm hearing the
suffering is really bad, and I haven't actually seen their kitchens.
So we end up going into the I end up
going into the kitchen and I think you came with
the camera.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
I was with you, you were running the camera. I'm like,
let's look, which I don't think it ever made anything
we put out, but.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
It was, yeah, because it would. We can't uncover her.
So we opened up the cupboards and there's seasonings, just seasonings,
you know, spices, that's it. We opened the refrigerator and
you want to tell them what we saw?

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Just cucumbers that they had grown in their front yard.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Nothing but cucumbers. There wasn't another item in the fridge
but cucumbers. And I asked, and that's all they've been
eating for months. Months, They've been living on cucumbers and
spices for months.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
That was their food. Oh my goodness. I was so broken.
And then we've met a family that same day, little
children about this about the age of Maverick and in
fact one was the age of Maverick. And we asked them.
It was a father and a mother, and we asked him,

(58:19):
when's the last time you had meet When was the
last time you had meat? And they said, you said
a day, a week, week. You're kind of going to listen.
They're going no, no, shaking their head. And it got
to like seven eight months, no meat in eight months,
and we had beef jerky in our bags. Oh yeah,

(58:41):
right here here, here's some beef jerky. Heave gave them,
you know, several things, and and and you said, I
want you to gather around your table tonight with this meat.
Tell them what you said. That was another moment. It
was another Travis moment.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
I just wanted them to thank God for it. And I, yeah,
you remember it better than I do.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
I think you said something like, gather on the table
and you tell your children, Oh, Jesus provided Jesus provided
meat for you gather.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Yeah, you gather around your table and you feed the
people at your table, and you use this meat, and
you say, you tell your children. You look at your
children and you tell them Jesus gave us this meat.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
And if and if you have any leftover, bring your
neighbors in here and give them the rest of it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Well I and I said make me a promise, will
you do that? And he said I will.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
He said I will, and I know he did because
the way he looked at it, I will. I was
a little afraid not to. Oh will. Yeah, that was
That was a beautiful moment. There was so many moments
in Israel. We've been talking an hour. We could probably
talk six hours. Has it been an hour?

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Yes, you love that, But we haven't even touched on
anything yet.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
Well, we need we just it's evident we need to
do this again. But I want everyone to know about
looking up for him, so that in the let's see,
if I could say this the right way, in the
time that you realized you were uncovered and that you're
you couldn't hide as as the covert the guy that

(01:00:12):
you were before. So we went the other direction. You
went the other direction and said, you know what, let's
be public. I have a lot of devotions I've written
and I continue. You continue to write them, and I'll
just speak them on my phone and put them on
social media and it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
I never had a Facebook account, I've never had Instagram,
I've never had a social media account.

Speaker 1 (01:00:36):
Ever rightly, so, yeah, ever, but but people heard truth
and they were hungry for it, and they and your
account grew and grew and drew it until I reached out.
I was like, hey, you know, this is growing at
a level that's likeficant unusual unusual, And you're like, we
don't know. I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Do you remember when Ever had to teach me how
to make a reel? I'm like, man, this is terrible,
I really it cuts me off. And then you're like,
you know you don't have so I would go live.
I'd always go live because I wanted to post something
more than ninety seconds, and so everything was live. Every
one of them was live. You're like, you don't have
to do live every time. You could just make a

(01:01:18):
post and that can be like sixty minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
What. Yeah, I don't have to go live. So go
follow looking up for the number four him, him, looking
up number four him, and you will see Travis. Who's
I could say his name now, and you'll give a
lot of devotions. You'll answer questions we do.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
A Thursday night live Bible answer.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Yes, and you also will give updates on Occasionally, where
you're going, or at least that you're going to be somewhere,
depends on you, and you'll have praier re quest for that.
What you can do is just go follow and if
you follow Travis, you will at least see him, and
you'll hear the Bible. You'll hear the Bible. You'll see
it a beautiful ranch. And yes, you do get some.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Updates on something is happening, very significant. Please be in prayer.
Those updates do come out to everybody, but you don't
know where or when or who or why, because how
in the world could you do it? And so yeah,
it's it's a it's really its attention and it's a sadness.

(01:02:32):
But but I'll say this, and you said this early
on when we talked about the whole oh man, just
give it to him.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
God touches people's hearts. So I don't. I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Maybe I'll like to tell you about this. You probably
don't know this, but the second trip, you know, we
there was some stuff that was done in Israel. Yeah,
somebody based on Jost of the instagrams. I didn't even
know it because they sent it to a different organization.

(01:03:07):
Somehow they connected me to a different organization. They sent
a very large gift. I didn't even know it because
I don't. I don't have anything to do with those.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
That you can't it would be corrupting to you. Yeah,
so I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
But we by faith were going in to take care
of some things, to help some people, some people we love,
some Christians, to bless them. And it was a significant amount.
I didn't even know it until this is really funny,
until like seven months later, I get a direct message
from this guy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
I don't know this guy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
It's just some guy, all right, And he's like, did
you ever get my gift?

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
I'm like, I don't know, when did you send it?
What was it? You know?

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
So this is now I look really flaky or like
he doesn't even have a clue, right because it was
a significant amount.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
And I'm like, well, I don't We're just send it conversations.
I don't know. Maybe how did you get there? And
he told me and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
So and then he direct messaged me it was for
this much, and I fell out of my chair. I'm like, uh,
I'll go look I got I don't know. I still
told him I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
I go look I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
And I contacted the people who were our accountants and said,
did this something like this come in And they're like, yeah,
but it was anonymous, it's got no name attached.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
It comes from nowhere. I'm like, oh, oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
So all that I want to want to say was
there was no plea for money. There was there was nothing.
There was a guy who was watching this, and he
was he was watching the he's watching the instavotions. He said,
that's real. The Lord, Yeah, that's real. He didn't send it,
by the way, he didn't send it to the social media,

(01:04:53):
didn't send it to looking up for him. He sent
it a different route.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
And I was just stunned.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
And it was one of those It was one of
those things like you had said, little take care of this, Yeah,
the little take care of this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Just don't worry about it. Just don't even worry about it.
Just be faithful. Put the word out there. And let
me just say, and I'll say this as vague as
I can, people didn't only eat cucumbers for a little
bit of time after that. Yeah, because of that, because
that guy made I'm sure there was more than cucumbers. Yes,
there was more than going around it. We made that trip.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
It was fantastic and I and it was just because
of this little social media thing that I'm looking up
for him. Yeah, just between me and you, I know,
we've got to wrap this up because you got to
somehow make this fit into a podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
I am not for social media.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
In fact, my kids all had a problem when I
started social media. I had a problem when I started.
I felt like I was unclean.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
But I don't think people by now after this hour,
are not thinking anything less of you for doing that.
I was thinking I was. But my kids they all
sat me down. They literally had those we need talk, Dad,
we need talk.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
You have Facebook, and I just want to know, are
you what's going on? And how did you come to
that conclusion and and just it's okay, it's okay, it's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
And I hope they're listening. Your sons that I have
traveled separately in different countries apart from each other and
different states of the US. That's true. Yeah, I love
those love those brothers so much. I love you, man,
thank you. I love you. Fact. I mean, you're here
for crazy circumstances which we don't have to get in.

(01:06:43):
But you're here at my house, and I I just
appreciate you and love you. And I'm still that coin
in your pocket, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:50):
Yeah, I'm still that oh yeah, yeah, you got a
little string on you so I can put you in
and then you and use you again.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Yeah all right, Well, thank you man, appreciate you. Thanks
for joining me on the Grangersmith podcast. I appreciate all
of you. Guys. You could help me out by rating
this podcast on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to
this channel. Hit that little like button and notification spell
so that you never miss anytime I upload a video.

(01:07:17):
Yigi