Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Travis Roberts: Battle Bus Mobile Bible Study For Veterans

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Travis Roberts: Battle Bus Mobile Bible Study For Veterans · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:03
  Welcome to Worldview Matters.
• 0:05
  Discussing controversial issues.
• 0:07
  Discerning current events.
• 0:10
  Defending biblical Christianity.
• 0:13
  No topic.
• 0:14
  Off limits.
• 0:16
  And now, here's your host, David Fiorazzo.
• 0:20
  Friends, family in Christ, thank you so much for tuning in to another podcast, another episode of Worldview Matters.
• 0:24
  Very important topic today and an in-studio guest on a Wisconsin-based ministry.
• 0:30
  It's so important, and I hope this would spread even more, not just statewide, but across the country.
• 0:36
  But I want to introduce to you Travis Roberts.
• 0:38
  He is with Battle Bus Ministries, and I want to give the website Battle Bus.
• 0:43
  BattleBusMinistries.org.
• 0:46
  BattleBusMinistries.org.
• 0:49
  You're going, BattleBus?
• 0:50
  What in the world is that?
• 0:52
  Well, that's why I brought him in to explain exactly what it is.
• 0:55
  Brother, welcome to the studio.
• 0:56
  Thank you for having me.
• 0:57
  Thanks for being on the show.
• 0:59
  So first of all, we want to get your story and your background, your testimony, how you came to the Lord Jesus.
• 1:05
  And now you're working for him.
• 1:06
  You know, you really want to reach veterans, of course, but you're all about the gospel.
• 1:10
  But before we do that, an overview of Battle Bus, the purpose, and then we'll get back to your testimony.
• 1:18
  Sure.
• 1:18
  So Battle Bus Ministries, my wife and I started about three months ago.
• 1:23
  And I didn't realize it was that new, actually.
• 1:25
  Yeah, yeah, very new.
• 1:27
  Wow.
• 1:27
  So the idea was that we could meet military members locally and across Wisconsin mentally, physically, and spiritually wherever they are.
• 1:35
  And so how do we do that?
• 1:37
  We have a lot of military members in Wisconsin.
• 1:40
  And in Brown County alone, Green Bay area, we have about 13,000 veterans.
• 1:44
  That's 6.5% of our population.
• 1:48
  So obviously them being spread out, you know, we were having a difficult time trying to figure out how to reach all of them and then to get them out of their comfort zone, because a lot of them would not step foot into a church on their own.
• 1:59
  And so we had this idea that the Lord put on our heart to convert a bus into a mobile Bible study room and kitchen.
• 2:08
  And so we got to work.
• 2:09
  We got a bus donated to us.
• 2:10
  We converted it.
• 2:12
  And now we're able to take military members and veterans on free retreats.
• 2:17
  So transportation, lodging, food is all included.
• 2:20
  We have a partnership with a retreat center in northern Wisconsin where we can take them up there and provide them a weekend retreat where we share the gospel with them.
• 2:29
  And then the idea is when we come back locally, we can follow up with them on a weekly basis and have Bible studies inside the bus wherever we want.
• 2:37
  So you mentioned in the bus, is there a kitchen?
• 2:40
  Yeah, there's a full kitchen in the back.
• 2:42
  So we've got a microwave, a stove, a sink in the back, and then it's all run off of a lithium-ion battery generator.
• 2:50
  So we don't need the bus to actually operate.
• 2:52
  And then the front looks more like a living room.
• 2:54
  And so there's a U-shaped couch kind of looking thing.
• 2:58
  We've got TV.
• 2:59
  We have Starlink.
• 3:00
  And so we can take military members on those retreats, but we also do day retreats.
• 3:05
  where we'll take them fishing or golfing, and then on the way back to Green Bay, we'll share the gospel through the event that we just did.
• 3:13
  This is amazing.
• 3:15
  I'm so excited to talk about this with you.
• 3:17
  What a great ministry.
• 3:18
  And it is brand new, by the way.
• 3:19
  I don't want to forget to mention they do have a brand new Facebook page.
• 3:23
  Look up Battle Bus Ministries on Facebook.
• 3:26
  I know a lot of you are on there.
• 3:28
  Look up Battle Bus Ministries.
• 3:30
  Go follow them.
• 3:31
  You keep up with what they're doing.
• 3:32
  I want to go back to the homepage now.
• 3:35
  And I told our producer, Jeff, that we were going to talk about this.
• 3:37
  You had just recently a reveal—
• 3:41
  How did you get this school bus?
• 3:44
  And then whose idea was it to transform it?
• 3:46
  Go ahead and run that video as Travis explains this, Jeff.
• 3:50
  Yeah, so I was dealing with an issue where, again, I was having a hard time ministering to military members and trying to reach large amounts of them as a full-time military missionary.
• 4:02
  And so at the time, my wife was trying to start a cafe.
• 4:06
  And just the cost of a...
• 4:08
  storefront, cafe, we would have to sell a lot of coffee and donuts to make rent, right?
• 4:13
  So the idea was that, what if we made a mobile cafe out of a school bus?
• 4:18
  And so we spent months preparing color schemes, the whole nine yards.
• 4:23
  I found this school bus and it was a really good deal, it was about $20,000 and the bus was practically brand new.
• 4:29
  And I was gonna surprise my wife and buy this bus for her cafe.
• 4:33
  But the morning that I was supposed to go get it, I thought, you know, maybe I want to stay married and ask for permission.
• 4:40
  And so I went to my wife and said, hey, you know, would you want me to spend twenty thousand dollars on this bus?
• 4:46
  And she laughed and she said, you know, it's been a lot of fun planning, but I can't do this.
• 4:51
  You know, I'm homeschooling the kids and my schedule is just jam packed right now.
• 4:56
  I can't take this on.
• 4:58
  And so I went to a Bible study that morning with a group of men, and I was kind of venting that we had spent all this time planning this cafe.
• 5:07
  And my wife backed out, and one of the guys said, you know, I think the Lord is going to use this.
• 5:11
  And on the way home, I was praying, and the thought was,
• 5:16
  kind of sparked, well, we can both fulfill our calling that the Lord has on our hearts.
• 5:21
  If I were to take this bus, do a Bible study in the front of it, and then my wife, her heart for serving and cooking, she could do that in the back.
• 5:29
  And so I called the guy that had the bus for sale, and I pitched him this idea, and he said, well, if that's what you want to do with the bus, we're going to donate the bus to you.
• 5:37
  What?
• 5:38
  Oh my goodness.
• 5:39
  The vision went very quick from vision to physical reality.
• 5:44
  And so I took about five months to rip the inside of the bus apart and just generous donations.
• 5:49
  The community really gathered around this idea.
• 5:52
  Everything inside that bus was donated.
• 5:54
  We didn't spend any personal funds on it.
• 5:56
  And so it just goes to show that the Lord was behind this the entire time.
• 6:00
  And like I said, we...
• 6:02
  I got this thing ready to go in July.
• 6:05
  We had a grand finale, um, uh, ribbon cutting ceremony and we had smoke machines go off and we had a fundraiser.
• 6:12
  So let's, let's show the viewers.
• 6:14
  I know if you're listening, we're going to show a video of the reveal of this battle bus, but you can see it next time you get online.
• 6:21
  You can go to battle bus ministries.org battle bus ministries.org.
• 6:26
  And there's a video that says about, uh,
• 6:28
  Battle Bus Ministries.
• 6:30
  So Jeff, go ahead and run that.
• 6:31
  And Travis, you can explain.
• 6:33
  There's the bus that was donated to you.
• 6:35
  Now here's the reveal.
• 6:36
  And it's coming out.
• 6:37
  Look at that.
• 6:38
  It's beautiful.
• 6:40
  My goodness.
• 6:43
  Look at this.
• 6:43
  It's just really an amazing vehicle.
• 6:47
  Romans 1, 6, you're not ashamed of the gospel, right?
• 6:50
  That's on the back.
• 6:51
  Yes.
• 6:52
  Look at, and here's the inside.
• 6:54
  Look at that.
• 6:54
  Got the Bible.
• 6:55
  This is for veterans, you guys.
• 6:57
  There's ribbon cutting.
• 6:58
  Jay Zoller is a part of that.
• 7:00
  There's your wife, right?
• 7:01
  Yes.
• 7:02
  She was in there.
• 7:03
  Awesome.
• 7:04
  So tell us more about how you came to this idea for Wisconsin.
• 7:10
  We're kind of going backwards.
• 7:12
  Do you want to hear your testimony?
• 7:13
  It's very important.
• 7:14
  But we're excited to hear more about how you came here and this idea developed.
• 7:19
  You were serving elsewhere.
• 7:21
  Did you say Texas, Oklahoma?
• 7:23
  Yes.
• 7:23
  And they had all these resources, and you could reach veterans much easier.
• 7:28
  Then you could, when you got to Wisconsin, fill in the gaps of that story, please.
• 7:32
  Sure.
• 7:32
  So my wife and I, we moved down to Oklahoma to minister to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which that's one of the sites where there's basic training for the Army.
• 7:41
  And then that's home of field artillery and air defense for the Army and the Marines.
• 7:44
  Okay.
• 7:45
  And so we went down there to launch a ministry for the basic trainees and then the tech school and AIT students.
• 7:52
  So we had about 800 to 1,200 soldiers coming to our Bible study about every Friday night.
• 7:59
  And so it grew rapidly.
• 8:00
  Then we found out that there was a base in Texas about 30 minutes south of Fort Sill called Shepherd Air Force Base.
• 8:07
  That's where they train the next generation of fighter pilots.
• 8:10
  So it's basically the Air Force's version of Top Gun, but they also have NATO there.
• 8:14
  Wow.
• 8:14
  And so they have 14 NATO nations that we launched a ministry with.
• 8:17
  And so the ministry was growing rapidly.
• 8:19
  We built a team of about 30 to maintain that.
• 8:23
  And just in the first year, my wife and I ministered to over 16,000 military members and had about 4,000 make a decision for Christ.
• 8:32
  Praise God.
• 8:32
  So the national directors of the organization that we are military missionaries with contacted us and asked if we'd be willing to come to Northeast Wisconsin because there's actually a very large Coast Guard presence here.
• 8:45
  I didn't even think about that.
• 8:46
  Right.
• 8:46
  Sturgeon Bay and up, you know, go ahead.
• 8:49
  Manitowoc.
• 8:50
  Yep, Manitowoc.
• 8:50
  And so there's actually 22 Coast Guard stations around Lake Michigan with one chaplain, and he's in Milwaukee.
• 8:57
  And so we contacted him and asked, what is your need?
• 9:00
  How can we fill spiritual and, you know, your physical ministry gaps?
• 9:05
  And he said, listen, I live a life on the road.
• 9:07
  I got a family.
• 9:08
  Would you be willing to take over the spiritual readiness of East Wisconsin?
• 9:13
  Yeah.
• 9:14
  And so in order to do that, I mean, that's a that's a huge undertaking.
• 9:17
  Right.
• 9:18
  And we also had opportunities where UW Green Bay, UW Oshkosh, between the two of them, they have about twelve hundred military affiliated students.
• 9:27
  So those might be reservists, National Guard, ROTC and then veterans.
• 9:33
  And then we've got tiny homes with veterans first.
• 9:35
  I don't know if you've heard about them, but they're building tiny homes for homeless veterans.
• 9:40
  I live right down the road from them.
• 9:42
  And so we saw the need was just so great, but we didn't have a common place to meet.
• 9:47
  We didn't have a place where we could all gather everybody and they're so spread out.
• 9:52
  How do we reach them?
• 9:53
  And so that's where we came up with the idea of the bus.
• 9:56
  Fantastic.
• 9:57
  Again, friends, please bookmark this site, battlebusministries.org.
• 10:02
  Now we're going to transition to your story.
• 10:04
  Sure.
• 10:04
  And you were in the military.
• 10:06
  Yes.
• 10:07
  And how you became a Christian and what God did and how he's using you now.
• 10:11
  But I want to go back to something we forgot to mention earlier.
• 10:14
  My home church, One Way Christian Church in Green Bay, is sponsoring a worship night that the proceeds are going to go to you.
• 10:22
  And it's called Night of Worship, One Way Christian Church.
• 10:25
  It's Saturday.
• 10:26
  This is for you guys in Wisconsin or northeast Wisconsin.
• 10:29
  Okay.
• 10:30
  Please, please, please consider coming to this.
• 10:33
  It's September 12th.
• 10:34
  from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
• 10:36
  It is a Saturday, and it's on 9th Street in Green Bay.
• 10:40
  It's an outdoor concert and worship night benefiting Battle Bus Ministries.
• 10:47
  Okay, it's also going to help the church's Building Hope operations.
• 10:52
  So Battle Bus Ministries is on the website, battlebusministries.org.
• 10:57
  You can look under events, or I think it might have even been on your homepage, but it's on the homepage.
• 11:02
  And the bus will be there.
• 11:03
  And the bus will be there.
• 11:04
  That's a beautiful vehicle.
• 11:07
  So now, let's get back to you.
• 11:10
  We're about halfway through the podcast here.
• 11:12
  I need to hear, and our audience is really probably wondering, wow, God's using you big time, and things are happening kind of fast with a new ministry, but how did you get here?
• 11:22
  And I know you were ministering in Texas, Oklahoma, but before that, were you a believer when you got into the military?
• 11:28
  Tell us about your story and what God did to reach you.
• 11:32
  Yeah.
• 11:33
  So I actually grew up in northern Wisconsin.
• 11:36
  Didn't know the Lord, didn't go to church, didn't grow up in a Christian home.
• 11:40
  And just after graduating high school, I came home and the locks were changed on my door.
• 11:46
  So I went from high school to homelessness within days.
• 11:50
  The locks were changed?
• 11:51
  Yeah, my parents kicked you out.
• 11:53
  Yeah, they made the decision that once I was 18 and graduated that their parenting was done.
• 11:59
  And so they kicked me out, and that was completely unexpected.
• 12:04
  And so this was in 2008 when the stock market crashed, and financially this nation was in trouble.
• 12:10
  And so shortly after that, I got laid off from my job.
• 12:15
  I was working at a factory at the time because I was kicked out.
• 12:18
  I was sleeping in the backseat of my pickup truck in the parking lot of my work just so I could get to work.
• 12:23
  And so it came to a point where I had to make a decision.
• 12:27
  I couldn't allow this situation that I was in to define who I am.
• 12:31
  And so I've always been patriotic.
• 12:33
  I've always loved my country.
• 12:34
  I needed a roof over my head, so I went down and I joined the United States Army, a six-year contract.
• 12:40
  I ended up serving eight years total.
• 12:43
  So the entire time I was in the military, I didn't know the Lord, just chased the world, did all the silly things that soldiers do, especially when they're single in the barracks, right?
• 12:55
  Yeah.
• 12:57
  became extremely addicted to my uniform.
• 13:01
  My identity was in my uniform, right?
• 13:03
  When you're in the military, everything that you do is on your uniform.
• 13:07
  Yeah.
• 13:08
  And you joined to be part of something greater than yourself.
• 13:11
  You're looking for community.
• 13:12
  And so when you get out, you lose all of that.
• 13:14
  You hang up your uniform, you lose your identity, you lose your community, you lose your purpose.
• 13:19
  And so I kind of hit rock bottom.
• 13:21
  Um, shortly after that, I was hired onto a sheriff's department in Tennessee.
• 13:24
  So I became a police officer.
• 13:26
  I loved it, but that became my new identity.
• 13:29
  And it got to the point where I was working nonstop.
• 13:32
  Um, got to the point where my wife met me at the door one night and said, Hey, listen, before you go to work, you need to know that you're married to your job and you're also married to me and you can't have both.
• 13:41
  So you need to make a decision.
• 13:42
  Whew.
• 13:43
  And so, yeah, it was a blow for sure.
• 13:47
  But I got in my vehicle and I got about five minutes up the road and I got hit head on by a drunk driver.
• 13:53
  And we were both going about 65 miles an hour and I was not wearing my seatbelt.
• 13:57
  But what God did was before impact, he spun me around in my seat and I went back first into my steering wheel.
• 14:05
  The airbag went off on my back, fracturing my spine in three places.
• 14:09
  Before the vehicle came to arrest, I was facing forward again.
• 14:12
  So if you think about God...
• 14:15
  I don't understand how that's possible, but I know.
• 14:17
  I still don't understand fully.
• 14:19
  Wow.
• 14:20
  But through that event, I came to Christ.
• 14:24
  So when this was during rehab, in the hospital, when you were out of the hospital, when did you have that moment of, okay, God, you got my attention?
• 14:36
  Yeah, so I never lost consciousness.
• 14:38
  I actually walked myself to the ambulance.
• 14:41
  And just to show you where my head was at, when I did find my phone through the wreckage, my first call was to my work to let them know that I wasn't going to make it.
• 14:50
  My second call was to 911.
• 14:52
  And my third call was to my wife.
• 14:54
  And so I definitely had my priorities a little messed up.
• 14:58
  But when my wife arrived on scene...
• 15:01
  I was kind of frustrated because I was waiting for her in the back of the ambulance and she wasn't coming out.
• 15:06
  She wasn't coming out.
• 15:07
  And finally, she got out of the vehicle, got in the back of the ambulance that she was bawling.
• 15:11
  And I said, you know, what's what's going on?
• 15:13
  What took you so long?
• 15:14
  And she said, my son, being six years old at the time, would not let her out of the vehicle until he prayed for me.
• 15:21
  And at that moment, I don't know where he got that from, but I looked out the back doors of the ambulance and seen my accident.
• 15:27
  And as a police officer, I had seen so many accidents before that I knew I shouldn't be alive.
• 15:32
  And so I knew that God had a plan for me.
• 15:33
  And so I surrendered my life to Christ right then and there.
• 15:37
  Later that afternoon, I got an opportunity to actually run into the guy that hit me.
• 15:43
  He was fine.
• 15:43
  He didn't have any injuries, but he was at the hospital getting blood alcohol content.
• 15:47
  And it was the first time that I actually saw the Holy Spirit evident in my life because I let him know that I love him and I forgive him.
• 15:54
  And you could almost physically see the burden that he wouldn't have to carry come off of him.
• 15:58
  So was he on your side of the road?
• 16:00
  How did you guys hit head on?
• 16:01
  Yeah, so we were going around a curve and I worked third shift.
• 16:04
  And so it was dark outside and I didn't realize that the headlights were fully in my lane.
• 16:09
  And so before I knew it, I mean, the last thought that I had before collision was, I know I'm not wearing my seatbelt and my life is over.
• 16:16
  It's done.
• 16:18
  So God had different plans.
• 16:19
  Absolutely.
• 16:20
  Wow.
• 16:21
  That is amazing.
• 16:23
  So, um, you know, a lot of people don't have that kind of testimony where they, where God just totally says, you are going to come and do what I want you to do.
• 16:32
  Um, so, um,
• 16:34
  I want to go back to your website and you can feel free to share anything else that you want.
• 16:38
  Sure.
• 16:38
  But, um, your mission is on there.
• 16:40
  You, you're, you, there's frequently asked questions on the bottom of the site.
• 16:45
  Um, you can email Travis guys if you want to, if you have any questions, a lot of you probably know someone who is either in the military or out of the military.
• 16:54
  I didn't realize there were that many veterans in Wisconsin, in Brown County, near green Bay and green Bay area.
• 17:01
  That's where you are based out of.
• 17:03
  Um,
• 17:04
  And I do want to mention before we run out of time, I want to make sure people know you need another vehicle.
• 17:10
  I do.
• 17:10
  And you're looking at it for a smaller vehicle.
• 17:12
  And I want to mention on the website, you can go to actually, how do they get to this link?
• 17:18
  It's for support our veterans to fund a community van.
• 17:22
  There it is.
• 17:23
  Jeff, you can bring that up.
• 17:24
  How do they get to this link?
• 17:25
  Where is this at?
• 17:26
  So you can go to our website and under donations or partnership, there's a link for trailer.
• 17:34
  And then there's also going to be a link.
• 17:35
  We'll add it after the show.
• 17:37
  Okay.
• 17:38
  So you can get the link for our fundraiser.
• 17:39
  We just launched it.
• 17:40
  So we don't have any proceeds yet, but we need a 15 passenger van to double our capacity to bring veterans and military members on our retreats that we offer.
• 17:50
  And then also it gives us a emergency backup in case something were to happen.
• 17:54
  So give us the numbers again for the amount of veterans in Brown County.
• 18:00
  Sure.
• 18:01
  In Wisconsin.
• 18:02
  So in Brown County, so that's the county that Green Bay is in, there's about 13,000 veterans.
• 18:07
  And that's 6% of the population of the state?
• 18:10
  6.5% of the population of the county.
• 18:12
  Oh, the county.
• 18:13
  Okay.
• 18:13
  Yes.
• 18:14
  So and just to give you some statistics, I think that this is extremely overlooked, but it's good to know, you know, you're supporting military members and things like that.
• 18:23
  But it's good to know the why.
• 18:25
  And so as of 2025, since September 11th, 2021, there's been four times more death by suicide in our military than there has in combat.
• 18:39
  Yeah.
• 18:39
  So we're losing an average of about 23 military members and veterans a day.
• 18:44
  That's almost one an hour.
• 18:45
  And the reason for that, I believe, is because when you look at the military itself, the word surrender is not in our vocabulary.
• 18:53
  So when you say you need to surrender to the Lord, they say, you know, I'm not about that.
• 18:57
  That's not what I am.
• 18:58
  And so inside the military as well, if you look at and you follow a military member from first day in the military to retirement, right?
• 19:06
  they're on average going to move between nine to 12 times in their career.
• 19:11
  So that means you're completely packing up your family.
• 19:14
  You don't know where you're going and you're having to start your life all over again.
• 19:18
  The average military child will go to nine different schools before they graduate high school.
• 19:23
  And then the average military member since September 11th, 2001, has spent somewhere between nine to 20 months away from their families.
• 19:32
  And so when you add all of this up,
• 19:34
  Our military has twice the divorce rate as any other career in our nation.
• 19:40
  And so you can see where the depression, the anxiety comes from.
• 19:43
  And when you get out of the military, unfortunately, they're forgotten about.
• 19:46
  Their health benefits shut off and they're looking for answers.
• 19:50
  That's what I found when I'm ministering to military members and veterans.
• 19:53
  They're looking for answers.
• 19:54
  But unfortunately, oftentimes they're looking in the wrong place.
• 19:57
  And so that's why we're here.
• 19:58
  We want to meet them mentally, physically, and spiritually to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to them so that way they can meet the true physician, the true healer.
• 20:07
  Oh, man, this is so important, guys.
• 20:09
  I didn't realize those kind of numbers.
• 20:11
  And I understand, though, when you explained about identity, when you were patriotic, but then you got in the military and it's like that was who you are, right?
• 20:21
  You didn't identify as anything else.
• 20:24
  But the military.
• 20:26
  So I want to just mention on the website under who we are.
• 20:29
  You can get a little bit more information on the board of directors.
• 20:32
  I see your wife is the president, Megan.
• 20:34
  She reminds me regularly.
• 20:36
  What's that?
• 20:36
  She reminds me regularly.
• 20:37
  Because you're only the, where are you?
• 20:40
  She's president.
• 20:41
  Where are you?
• 20:42
  So I am a full-time missionary with a separate organization that we partner with.
• 20:47
  Okay.
• 20:47
  So the idea was that we were able to do this bus under my wife's name.
• 20:52
  So we launched our own nonprofit.
• 20:54
  Okay.
• 20:54
  Great.
• 20:55
  Well, you're doing amazing work in such a short amount of time.
• 20:59
  I see Jay Zoller on there.
• 21:00
  I see Amber Rocky, Debbie Gossie.
• 21:04
  Yes.
• 21:04
  Yep.
• 21:04
  So remember, we're going to.
• 21:07
  Try to connect with you, Debbie, if you're watching this.
• 21:09
  But shout out to Megan.
• 21:11
  So how many kids do you have?
• 21:14
  Two.
• 21:15
  Two.
• 21:15
  How are your kids doing?
• 21:16
  How's your family?
• 21:17
  I mean, you must be busy doing this and just taking a lot of effort, but...
• 21:23
  Yeah.
• 21:23
  You know, when we became full-time missionaries back in 2024, the Lord really put on my heart that he's not just calling me, he's calling my entire family.
• 21:33
  And so we agreed going into it that we were going to be a ministry family.
• 21:36
  So we find roles for our children to play.
• 21:39
  And so when we were down at Fort Sill...
• 21:41
  My daughter, being six, seven years old, would come and hand out Bibles, and my son would help seat soldiers.
• 21:47
  And so they love getting on the bus.
• 21:49
  They love going and meeting new military members and giving them resources and praying over them.
• 21:54
  And so it's a family event.
• 21:55
  It's a family ministry.
• 21:57
  That's amazing.
• 21:58
  Very, very neat.
• 22:00
  Guys, I just really want you to connect with Travis and Megan.
• 22:04
  Go to the Facebook page again.
• 22:06
  You can message them there, Battle Bus Ministries.
• 22:09
  You can connect his emails on the website.
• 22:12
  I want to remember to mention the worship night again, September 12th.
• 22:16
  That's right on the homepage of their site.
• 22:18
  a one-way Christian church in Green Bay, the night of worship, benefiting Battle Bus Ministries.
• 22:23
  You mentioned you were doing missionary work in Israel.
• 22:27
  Can you give us the nutshell, the condensed version of that?
• 22:31
  Do you feel comfortable talking about that?
• 22:33
  Yeah, yeah.
• 22:33
  Okay, do it.
• 22:34
  That's important.
• 22:37
  Every year I take my vacation time to go on a missions trip.
• 22:40
  That is how I rejuvenate.
• 22:41
  That's amazing.
• 22:42
  So this last year just so happened to be Israel.
• 22:46
  But not only Israel, we spent our entire three weeks in Judea and Samaria.
• 22:51
  And so the idea was we were going to bless the Jewish people by serving in their farms and communities, which is really cool because we went to prune vineyards and work farms and plant olive groves, which there's a prophecy in Isaiah that says that when Israel becomes a nation again, foreigners will come.
• 23:09
  And prune your vineyards and plow your fields.
• 23:12
  And that's exactly what we were doing.
• 23:14
  And so when I got there, I was excited to be there, but I didn't realize the why until I got there.
• 23:21
  And we were educated on the political landscape of what's going on.
• 23:24
  And...
• 23:26
  In short, the Arabs are stealing Jewish land in Judea and Samaria.
• 23:32
  And so in order to combat that, they have the farmers expanding their farms beyond reason so that way they can hold the land.
• 23:42
  Originally, what they would do is they would fence off.
• 23:45
  additional farmland and try to put cattle and livestock on the land.
• 23:50
  And they literally said that their sheep are their soldiers.
• 23:53
  But what happened is the Arabs would come and steal their livestock at night because they have to be able to prove that the land is being used for agriculture in order to hold it.
• 24:02
  And so –
• 24:03
  What was happening was the Arabs being funded by the UN and the EU, the Democratic Party through the Palestinian Authority.
• 24:10
  What they're doing is they're building Arab communities, but nobody lives there.
• 24:14
  And they only build their buildings to 90 percent because if they build it past that, then they have to start paying taxes to Israel and they won't do that.
• 24:21
  Oh, my goodness.
• 24:22
  And so there's literally heard that this is true, friends.
• 24:24
  I've heard this.
• 24:25
  I've read reports on it.
• 24:27
  And I really want to make sure you guys understand what he's saying.
• 24:31
  This is deceptive.
• 24:32
  This is the enemy just trying to steal their land.
• 24:35
  Yes.
• 24:35
  And not pay taxes to Israel.
• 24:38
  Go ahead and share a little bit more.
• 24:40
  Yeah, so to kind of combat that, local farmers are having to take, maybe they have a 40-acre farm, they're having to expand it to like 100 to 200 acres because what they'll do is the Arabs will start building around Jewish communities.
• 24:55
  And if they can completely surround the Jewish community, they can take it over and run the Jewish community out.
• 25:00
  And so...
• 25:01
  To combat that, like I said, the farmers will expand their farms, but they don't have the capacity to prune those vineyards and to harvest those grapes.
• 25:10
  And so what we did was we went there on a mission trip.
• 25:13
  There was people from all over the world that came together to just bless them and offer free labor to help them hold the biblical land of Judea and Samaria.
• 25:22
  So I just want to emphasize something that I don't think I've ever done in my life.
• 25:27
  I didn't use vacation time to go on a missions trip.
• 25:31
  That's just amazing, brother.
• 25:32
  I mean, kudos to you.
• 25:34
  So when was that recently?
• 25:37
  That would have been.
• 25:38
  A couple years ago?
• 25:39
  No, that was the last part of February of this past year.
• 25:42
  So we left February 15th, 2025, 26.
• 25:44
  This year?
• 25:45
  This year.
• 25:45
  Okay, wow.
• 25:46
  Wow.
• 25:50
  And so I was actually there when Operation Epic Fury kicked off.
• 25:55
  So we woke up Saturday morning around six o'clock.
• 26:00
  Our building that we were in was shaking.
• 26:02
  I went outside and looked up and we saw Israeli and American fighter jets flying overhead, heading east.
• 26:09
  And we knew they were going to Iran.
• 26:10
  And about an hour later, air raid sirens went off.
• 26:13
  And we spent the next 24 to 48 hours in bomb shelters.
• 26:16
  Did you know what was going on when it first started?
• 26:20
  Did you get any reports from the U.S. or what was happening?
• 26:23
  I mean, before we went on our missions trip, we knew that the possibility of war kicking off was really high, right?
• 26:32
  Yeah.
• 26:32
  And there was this hesitancy, honestly, you know, there was a fear and hesitancy.
• 26:35
  Of course.
• 26:36
  Should I go or not?
• 26:37
  And I was kind of confiding in a friend of mine on whether I should go or not.
• 26:40
  And he said, Travis, he said, you're safer to be in God's will in the middle of a war zone than to be at home on your couch and not be in God's will.
• 26:49
  There's something right there.
• 26:51
  Let's just pause it right there.
• 26:52
  We're going to have you back again, Lord willing.
• 26:55
  It's safer to be in God's will in a war zone than at home on your couch.
• 27:00
  And that's kind of like I got a double meaning to it, meaning Christians got to get off there, you know, and do...
• 27:07
  God's work.
• 27:08
  Brother, got to have you back.
• 27:10
  Travis, thank you for your time.
• 27:11
  Thank you for having me.
• 27:12
  BattleBusMinistries.org.
• 27:16
  Friends, remember the night of worship coming up.
• 27:18
  It's this Saturday night, September 12th, 4 to 7 p.m., One Way Christian Church, Green Bay.
• 27:24
  Thanks for watching and for sharing this one.
• 27:26
  God bless you, and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.