The Story of Snowbird (Part 1) – Brody Holloway Interview

In this special episode of NSR, the tables are turned and our favorite hype guy, Jon Rouleau, interviews Brody about the early days of Snowbird. Listen as they discuss the vision and heart behind SWO.

• Be Strong: Snowbird Men’s Conference
• Snowbird Marriage Conference
• Snowbird College Retreat
• Email Jon – jonr@swoutfitters.com
• Email Brody – brody@swoutfitters.com

Transcript – The Story Of Snowbird (Part 1)

Brody 

Hey, this is going to be a way different episode. Jon Rouleau came up to me last Friday and said, hey, I want to sit down and interview you, but I want to do it as an NSR episode and I loved the idea, he said, I think there’s a lot of questions that I could ask you that folks would be interested in hearing and so, anyway, it was kind of, a different approach to NSR and what this week’s episode will look like. We spent a lot of time together. I enjoyed the conversation so much. Jon’s such a good personal friend, but he knows so much of the history of SWO he’s been here for a lot of it, so I think he did a great job as an interviewer. I hope that I gave him what he was looking for and I hope it’s something that you guys can gain something out of a lot of the highs and lows and just the storyline of SWO over the last quarter century and more, actually, more than that, I had a blast doing this episode. It’s long, it’s a lot of content and I hope you don’t get bored with it. I hope you actually find it interesting. I believe you will, but I think this falls in line just a Little bit of everything, Little bit of tailgate theology, Little bit of beyond the flannel graph, Little bit of a whole lot of no sanity story and this is it. This is a lot of the story of Snowbird wilderness Outfitters and no sanity required. So, get comfortable, this is a long one and I hope you get something out of it, let us know what you think we’ll see at the end of the episode,

Welcome to no sanity required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible culture and stories from around the globe.

Jon 

All right, well, hey, welcome to the No Sanity Podcast. No Sanity Required Podcast, I’m going to be your host today. Jon, something a Little different and man, I had this idea. I was talking to my wife about it and I was like, I get a chance to sit at the fires at camp and just hear stories about, early days of Snowbird, or stuff that happened in our life, or when God, transformed this person and it’s just really special and I thought, Brody does all of these, he interviews other people, brings different guests on, but I know the listeners like me, I would love just to interview Brody and ask him about his life and Snowbird and that kind of, thing. So, I pitched the idea and I was, I literally went up to him and I said, hey, I said, hey, Brody I said, I have this idea, let me, maybe in the future, if you ever, need an episode. I said, what if I just interviewed you and asked you some questions and he’s like, let’s do it right now and I was like, I said, hold on, can I can I get a day to think about it? I was like, I didn’t even think about a question, you know what but he’s like, hey, I just want to do it right now and I was like, so that’s,

Brody 

That’s, you know me, that’s just how I am. that’s a blessing and a curse. That’s the way I’m wired

Jon 

Yeah. So, I was like, okay. So, I was like, well, I better get some questions. So, just so everybody knows, I have a few questions in my mind. We haven’t talked about anything. I’m just; I’m going to kind of, rapid fire and just see where this goes.

Brody 

See where this goes and if people have questions, they’d like to for me to answer, for us to talk about, we do another episode, email us some questions, email them to Jon email them to me.

Jon 

Yeah, that’d be awesome; it’s Jonr@swoutfitters, but yeah, so I kind of, wanted to start off because we’ve grown up completely different. I grew up in Southern California and moved here to Andrews, you’ve grown up in the mountains and I love to hear those stories, because it’s just so different and so, can you maybe, let’s just start off. I’d love to hear about, a Little bit about your childhood, how you grew up in the mountains, you talk about your brothers and you guys fighting and your dad was in ministry and just so many of those aspects. So, can you just maybe just share a Little bit, what does that look like growing up in the mountains?

Brody 

Yeah, I can hit some, high points. So, my mom’s side of the family goes back to, six generations, maybe in the mountains of North Carolina and so, I got a long, deep mountain pedigree. This, it’s a unique culture. Southern Appalachian culture it’s not southern culture. Like Southern Appalachian culture looks more like Central and Northern Appalachian culture than it does the south. The accent is closer to a southern accent, but and I don’t really have the Appalachian accent anymore, it’s funny watching old home videos, because I did, even in the early Snowbird days, I had it, but it’s a unique culture and part of that is because it was a culture of people settled here from the Scottish Highlands, primarily and they were just kind of, wanted to be left alone and were left alone, traded with the Cherokee, lived here and so, anyway. So there’s, a lot of deep roots that are cultural, but my dad’s side of the family. My granddad came here after World War Two and met and married and my grandmother on my dad’s side of the family and he was from Mississippi, my granddad, Virgil Holloway, had grown up Mississippi, left Mississippi as an 18 year old to go in to service whatever and late 40s, early 50s, late 40s, ended up in North Carolina after World War Two, but then he never left North Carolina and so, my dad’s dad was a pastor, but he’s bi vocational.

He worked in a mill and he was a pastor, he came to faith as an adult after he got out of the military and around time my dad was born and then, yeah, I grew up on a dirt road, gravel road, just typical growing up in the 70s and 80s in a rural setting. Didn’t have TV when I was growing up and so, we just stayed outside the person had the biggest impact on me as a man would have probably been my mom’s dad, he’s a mountain guy and was a World War Two veteran and worked at a factory here in the mountains and then, my dad. There are a lot of things that I’m thankful that my dad really instilled in me, grit, toughness, hard work, those things, but my dad was a lot of people know my dad’s story, one of the first episodes on NSR. I told it he was a pastor when I was young; he was a bi vocational pastor. Went to seminary, was seminary trained and educated, but he fell into infidelity and had a series of extramarital affairs and those forced us to move several times, he was pastoring, he would get in trouble and then, we would move. I only learned that as an adult sitting down my mom.

Hey, tell me this and my dad sitting down, my dad and he’s like, hey, remember when you were in second grade, we had moved up to Boone, which is where Appalachian State University is, that’s where my dad played football on a scholarship there and he and my mom married while and I was born right away, while they were like sophomores at App State and so, we had roots there and so, when I went to second grade there and then, we left there, well, I found out. My dad told me that was because of an extramarital affair and then, came down here, back down to Haywood County, which most of our listeners aren’t going to know the geography, but a couple hours, hour and a half, moved back to Southwestern, north Carolina and my dad pastored and then, when I was in middle school, we moved I found out that was because of infidelity. So, it was a convoluted view of Christianity growing up, because my dad while he was pastoring, he was like a fundamentalist, which is super strict sect of Baptist life where you can’t listen to music with drum beat, girls supposed to wear skirts or dresses, real strict dress code and can’t go to the movies and my younger siblings didn’t have as much of an experience of this. Things started to loosen up when I was a teenager. I’m thankful for that.

But, so that was kind of, I grew up in a pretty tight, legalistic religious structure and so, that was my formative that was my growing up experience with like theology and church and so, it didn’t, it was a strange upbringing, for sure, but a home where there was I think, a lot of love, a lot of extended family, all my aunts and uncles and cousins lived in the same area. We all lived in Haywood County, which is where Waynesville, North Carolina, Maggie Valley, North Carolina and Canton North Carolina. Those are the three towns in Haywood County just west of Asheville and so, yeah. Grew up hunting fishing, I grew up on a dirt road where there were tomato farms and we would ride our bikes. We would take inner tubes and ride our bikes up. It was right on the Pigeon River. They irrigated out of the Pigeon River. We’d ride our bikes up to the bridge, couple miles up the dirt road and then, throw our tubes in the river and float the Pigeon River down to the farm below our house and we’d get out. It was the Henson brothers had it, they farm for a living, big tomato farms. We’d get out and just a fun upbringing, playing in the river, fishing, swimming, riding our bikes.

Jon

That’s awesome,

Brody 

It was a very, very 70s and 80s, rural mountain upbringing. By the time I got into high school, I graduate, I went through high school in the late 80s. So, a that was just a fun era to be in high school as a cool, think, go watch Stranger Things or…

Jon 

I mean, the best movies are in the 80s.

Brody 

They are.

Jon

You watch the 80s and you’re like, gosh, there’s this nostalgia that you, I think everybody wishes they lived in that era.

Brody 

It was a cool time to grow up and I grew up in a time where I was talking to my boys, my younger boys the other day, where I remember getting in fist fights weekly in elementary school, in middle school, it was, boys were just rough and tumble. If you got in a fight at school, you got disciplined, but you didn’t… There was no SRO; you weren’t getting kicked out of school. It’s just kind of, a different time. Boys could be boys. So, I have a younger brother, biological brother, who’s a couple years, three years younger than me and we grew up, but he’s, he’s a big dude and so, we were closer in size, he was, it looked more like we were the same age, because he was such a big kid and so, we grew up together.

Jon 

His brother looks like a gladiator. PS, I Okay. Listen when, when I first moved back and it was a birthday party for you at the snack shack and your family was here and I remember rolling up thinking, who are these Neanderthals? it was just like everybody. I was like, is this like a UFC camp thing. What’s happening here?

Brody 

I tell people I’m the runt of the men in my family and they don’t believe because, people are like, there’s no way, but I am, I have my cousin Scott on here not long ago, he’s retired Secret Service agent and it was fun, because he was the only one that didn’t grow up here with the rest of us, his dad and mom, his dad was from the middle part of the state, outside of Charlotte, but he’s big old boy, he’s a he’s a big dude, my family so my brother, we grew up very rough and tumble in a good way. Not rough, on the streets. Just tough kid like, got to be boys, if you got bloody or needed stitches or a bone set, it was just not a big deal and I can remember getting the first time I remember getting stitches was I was probably in second grade and I remember freaking out and my dad just saying, hey son, this is probably going to happen a lot. It’s not a big deal. We’re going to go to the doctor, they’re going to put some stitches in your head and it was and  like I remember, I tell this story, I’m breaking my nose. I broke it twice and the first time, my dad took me to the doctor and the doctor reset it with these two Little probe looking things, he kind of, slid them up into my nose and he just straightened it, he just one in each nostril, he straightened it. It wasn’t like, smashed and shattered, it was just cracked and offset and he straightened it up and broke my nose again. I remember my dad saying, I can do that. We aren’t going to doctor this time and he just, pulled on my nose and so, I remember breaking a finger in football and my dad saying, ah, you don’t need to go to doctor for broken fingers. We can straighten that. We can fix that and he pulled on it and jerked on it and then, taped it to a Popsicle stick,

Jon 

Technically, I don’t think that’s true, but. That’s fine.

Brody 

That’s not true It’s not and it’s, it’s great because there’s enough of our listeners and enough people at Snowbird that got to know my dad, enough to know he was an interesting dude and was rough as a cob, but was a larger than life kind of, personality and but, anyway, yeah, so that was my upbringing, just we were poor. I would say by today’s dinners, we were poor. I didn’t know we were poor, but we did not have much and drove old beat up cars and again, I’m the oldest, so I have a lot of memories from childhood that other siblings probably wouldn’t quite remember as much, but we never had a lot and I’m grateful for that. My dad really made me work a lot like I’ll tell this one story and I’ll, be done with that, but when I went off to college, I was an athlete. I went to college to play basketball and so, you don’t get time off, you don’t get to go home when you’re a collegiate athlete, it’s a year round sport at that point they were going to give us thanksgiving. They said, don’t get used to this. It’s not going to happen very often, but they were going to give us thanksgiving off and so, that’s right in the middle of basketball season, but what it was, we had a tournament. You start, midnight madness in October and it’s a big tip off and you play at midnight of. The first day the NCAA let you play ball and everybody was there and it’s kind of, crazy and the stands are full.

Then, at Thanksgiving, I got to go home. We got to go home for Thanksgiving. We got to have Thursday, Friday, Saturday, off. We had to be back on Saturday evening and we had meetings on Sunday. So, they give us three days off and I remember the upperclassmen saying, this has never happened. I remember a guy named Mike Coleman, he was a senior, played center 6.11 dude and he said they’ve never given us these days off. So, my dad, he calls me. My parents were still together at this point. They got divorced after I was in college, he gave me a voucher to fly home and now I’m flying. It takes me five hours to drive. It took me eight hours to fly home because I flew out of Lynchburg to Roanoke, to Raleigh, Durham to Asheville, so funny I should’ve just drove home. So, I get home, he picks me up and this is all on Wednesday night. We had practice on Wednesday and Wednesday afternoon, a fly out. I get home at midnight. We celebrate. We do Thanksgiving. We had a lot of cool traditions. We went hunting on Thanksgiving morning always go to my papa’s house, my granddad’s house and we had a big meal. Well, Friday morning, my dad had lined up that I would work as a temp with Allied moving company and I said what? I’m exhausted, exhausted, you know what that looks like

Jon 

And you got a turkey coma.

Brody 

I’m in a turkey coma and have just worked my tail off my first semester of college and I got up, I had to be at Allied van company, so I don’t remember where I had to go, but at seven in the morning and I didn’t have vehicle, so he took me, drop me off.  So, seven o’clock Friday morning drops me off. I get in an 18 wheeler with a guy and we drive out to Lake Lure up into this expensive home, gated community. These people had built a house and we’re moving their stuff in and I got and we unload an 18 wheeler, a semi. I remember we moved in a piano, me and this truck driver and I was working as a temp and I worked 10 hours that day and then, on Saturday, I had to work half a day. I had to fly back Saturday evening, he worked me half a day Saturday and I think I made like 80 bucks in two days and I remember just going, I’m never going to go home on break. I’m not doing it, but ended up I’m thankful for that, so I was raised to work hard and didn’t really make my fate. I don’t think I didn’t become a true Christ follower till I was 19 years old, because it was just a religious system, I would say, growing up and there was so much emphasis on the do’s and don’ts and so, anyway, that was a long answer. I just spent 15 minutes…

Jon 

That wasn’t a pumpkin spice latte fall for you.

Brody 

No, it was not. It definitely was not. I remember when I said we didn’t have money, we didn’t have snacks at the house and so, the snacks were, my mom would buy big tubs of peanut butter and we would eat peanut butter on just spoonfuls of peanut butter. That was the snack I would have, but then my mom, she cooked breakfast every morning. We had grits every morning, because it’s cheap, she’d make a big pot of grits every day in my life, thankful for that. With a lot of love, my mom is an awesome lady and just a lot of love, but I remember we would get to eat cereal on Saturday mornings and it would be plain rice krispies or corn flakes, but I can remember not having milk and putting water in the cereal and eating it. I remember that vividly and would still do it when I got to college, because I had done it,

Jon 

Yeah man, that’s crazy. Well, I love that insight in the sense that, you’re obviously sharing, no family’s perfect, there’s obviously some brokenness that was there, but I’ve heard you say multiple times, there’s a lot of love was there and that seems that it shaped you a Little bit, but I guess the question that comes to my mind when I’m hearing you say that, with your dad and the legalism and some of the extramarital affairs, all that kind of, stuff and but, yet still have an extended family, different people. Was there somebody in your life maybe that, when you look back, was maybe a Little bit more of that, Christ, example, you know what or where, was there anybody was at a collection of things, was just things that you picked up, how did it kind of, lead you to that place when you were 19. Was there seeds planted early?

Brody 

Yeah, I think, yes. So, there was, for sure, there was a lot of Scripture put into my mind, I think, I did Bible drill as a kid, where you memorize Scripture and I was there every time the church doors were open and but, I think my spiritual formation occurred. So, when I was 19, what happened was I was just like seeking truth and okay, I was wrestling with is, if I’ve been fed a lie my whole life, you come to that point where you got to make your faith your own, Scripture says the Gospel is not of the flesh. So, in other words, you’re not born a Christian. It’s nontransferable. Nobody gives it to you. You’re not born with it. It’s something that the Lord provides and so, when I was 19, I was just trying to figure out, who am, what am I going to do and so, the Lord was so kind to show me favor and I just, I think, I decided I’m going to make this my own and after that, I just committed to read the Bible. I started reading the Bible and then, the Lord put some people in my life along the way that I learned from and…

Jon 

This was, was this after you had gone to college?

Brody 

Yeah, I was 19. I was a sophomore in college, when I made a profession of faith, I think and I didn’t, make a profession of faith and make it a public it’s like, I don’t, this is crazy. I don’t know when I really got saved.

Jon 

Was that at Liberty, were you?

Brody 

Yeah and people say, how did you go to Christian school when you weren’t a… Well, I had all the answers. I knew what to say, but I was zero confidence of myself.

Jon 

And you were an athlete so, there’s always exceptions.

Brody 

Yeah, there’s exceptions and you had to write down, I don’t remember now, but yeah, just profess to be a Christian and I did, but and I had to go through Bible classes that first year and I’m not kidding, Jon I skipped them, didn’t go, it’s easy to dodge class and they had advisors that came and checked to make sure we were in class and as soon as the advisor came through, they were grad assistants. They were taking role to make sure athletes were in class, they were from the team and I would slide out and I’d skipped a lot of classes, but just kind of, go through the motions, but yeah, so my personal journey was that my sophomore year, I made a profession of faith and a lot of it had to do with Little because I saw her and thought, I really want to talk to her and maybe I don’t know the terminology I would have used date her or go out with. I don’t remember.

Jon

Hey now, she’s a Bible girl,

Brody

Which and she, but what was crazy is she was a brand new Christian and she wasn’t like on fire for God or anything. She was there on a scholarship to play ball. That’s how I met her. That’s how it saw her anyway, was in the vine center, in the gym, shoot around practice, but I remember this. The Lord used my desire to pursue a woman to say, I remember this self-check of, okay, how am I going to do this? I’ve never seen this done right my dad. I knew my dad’s stuff like my parent’s marriage was like Rocky and my mom was so good and gracious and kind, but she would, my mom would confide in me, your dad doesn’t talk to me, he ignores me. It’s hard. She would say to me, one day, you’re going to be a husband. Please talk to your wife. Please pay attention to her. Well, I know now it’s because, he didn’t need that, he was getting it elsewhere, whatever and I saw it. I felt that tension and there’s even been tension. I felt tension. I talked to my oldest sister several years ago because she had posted on a social media post about because my dad died 20 years ago, almost he was 55, 54, 55 when he died, but she had posted Happy Father’s Day to the greatest dad a girl could ever have and Happy Father’s Day in heaven and I’m like, I hope my dad’s in heaven. I’m not sure. I’m not a 100% confident in that, but I remember just talking to her and saying that’s a slap in the face to your husband because she’s married to a good dude who’s a good dad and a good husband.

I was like, I don’t know what you remember about our dad, but he wasn’t there for our mom, he was unfaithful to our mother and the lesson that I’ve learned is the greatest gift parents can give their kids is to love each other well, I think that the love between mom and dad, husband wife, is the binding, bonding agent of a family and so, my dad did not treat my mom well, he just was ugly and short and he was not abusive, he didn’t raise his hand against her. Was just cold and a lot of times indifferent and my mom would say to, I remember so many times my mom would say to me, be good to your wife. Talk to her, love her and she probably confided more in me than maybe she should have at that time, but I’m glad she did, because I was super aware and I remember thinking, okay, I want to have relationship with this girl, but I don’t even know what that looks like, that’s when I got, I started to really self-reflect and that’s when I got serious about, okay, I’m going to follow Jesus. If I follow Jesus and I commit to follow the Lord and the Lord used a few conversations I had with people, but it’s weird Jon, because I don’t have, sounds so cold and terrible, but I know the Lord used my upbringing, but I don’t look at anybody from my childhood as like, man. I learned a lot from that guy, want to be like him. It was that legalistic, weird form of Christianity that I don’t regret it, because it did. So, what it did was it was, it put a lot of Scripture in my heart, that when I became a Christian, I remember my 20s just thinking, I need to go back and study all this stuff that I know that I don’t really know. Jesus one time said to the Sadducees.

You don’t know the Word of God or the power of God and these people had memorized the whole Torah and the Pentateuch. They could quote it verbatim and tell you what page and what position on the page every word was on and he’s like, but you don’t know the Word of God that knowledge. That’s what I didn’t have, personal, real, intimate knowledge and so, my early 20s, so I started to pursue Little I started to, we ended up in a relationship and got married. Within a couple years, we were married and I just I realized, okay, if I’m going to do this right by then my folks had had major issues and I’m like, their marriage was failed I’m not going to and then, her parents eventually would go on and be divorced, but they stayed married a lot longer, but I remember we talked about their marriage, the dynamic, remember having those conversations and so, it was like, what motivated me as a man of God, as a person to follow Jesus, was I want to get marriage right. I want to do this right and I don’t have an example of that and the Lord did bring I talk a lot about a man named Lance Bingham, he’s a head track coach now at Liberty and at the time, we were brand new married couple and I met Lance and he had come there as an assistant coach and we’re still in school and I got to see a healthy husband dad who loved his family well.

Jon 

Man, praise the Lord. You know me, I grew up Catholic and so, I can identify in the sense that, there was something about having a religious upbringing, that there was still a respect for God and Jesus and maybe even though it wasn’t played out, right, when I became a Christian, there were some Bible stories and some things that all of a sudden, now, it’s like the Holy Spirit illuminated those, it’s like they were stored inside without life and then, once Jesus came in me, then it was like those things kind of, came to life.

Brody 

That’s a good way to explain it, that’s exactly what I feel, I knew a lot, but it was not illuminated,

Jon 

Well, I’m just going to keep, because even as I’m listening, my brain’s going a million places. So, okay, 19, God really used Little and you’re growing in the Lord at what stage in your life, were you like, I want to do this for a living, I want to do, ministry and maybe ministry, maybe Snowbird. I don’t know if it was like camp ministry or, how’d you get to that place?

Brody 

Yeah, all that’s going to it’s cool it’s a good place to plug the book that’s coming out, Lord willing, this coming year, where I tell the story of how we started Snowbird. So, after my sophomore year, I stopped playing basketball and my deal with myself was I’m going to put in for this job that would provide a scholarship if I get it, if I can get this job, then I’m going to let my basketball money go and walk away from that and because that’s a different story, but it was basically I realized I just, to be honest, I wasn’t good enough to be playing at that level. The Lord had opened that door and I realized, oh, these guys are all bigger, faster, stronger, but it got me there and nobody would work harder than me, but I’m a six three guy and our point guard was my height and I wasn’t a point guard. I was a swing. I was a three and our threes, the other two threes were, one was 6.7, one was 6.6 and they could move and so, I just realized, the writing’s on the wall here. I don’t want to keep doing this. I’m not going to probably get even as a senior. I’m probably not going to be getting much playing time. There was a guy named John that was on our team, he was a senior and he was like me and he was getting about three minutes a game as a senior and I had a conversation with him, he said, I worked my tail off for four years and I’m finally getting three minutes, three minutes, three to four minutes a game, he’s like, you better love it, because, I think he was averaging one point a game, scoring a bucket every other game and so, I was like, I don’t think I want to do that. So, I put in for a job with an outfit called Liberty Expeditions, which was a high adventure program

Connected to the university, but it was the university used an outside company to do all their, for their outdoor ed program, outdoor education and recreation program at the time, they used this guy that ran an outfitter on the New River in West Virginia. So, long story short, I put in with that guy and got the job. I had taken an elective class with them called high adventure outdoor, intro to high adventure outdoor. We learned some outdoor adventure stuff, ropes and stuff and I’d done some white water trips with them. So, I put in thought, this would be fun to do. It just seemed fun and I got the job. So, went to work at Liberty Expeditions Matt Jones, who’s one of my executive partners here at Snowbird. We call him Mugs, he and I got that job together. That’s where our relationship, our friendship, really forged he was an outdoor Ed major. I was not. I was a criminal justice major and so, that Job was designed to be given to outdoor Ed majors. So, I put in for it and the guy said, we’ve never given this scholarship to somebody that’s not in the outdoor Ed program and I said, but I had volunteered so much in that because you could volunteer. It’s like, imagine Snowbird. You could just come out and volunteer, I’d volunteered so much that that guy was like, I just want him over and he gave me two, there were two scholarships in that program and so, I made that my minor and I got that scholarship. So, what that scholarship did was it paid for my schooling and then, we worked in the program and so, I worked for this company called Liberty Expeditions.

They ran whitewater trips on the New And Galley Rivers in West Virginia and then, they did, our main job Mugs and our main job was leading horseback riding trips and up in the woods and trail rides and stuff and then, that got me into camp and so, then after and then, I got married a year or two later and then, that I was done with school and I was just going to work landscaping, mowing. I was working. I was cutting grass because Little still had a year of school left, I’ll just work locally and then, once she had her degree, we’ll figure out where we want to go start together in life. We’re already married. Well, I get a call from a guy at a camp, a youth camp, about 20 minutes away and he said, hey, I got your name from Robin Carroll. That was the guy that ran Liberty Expeditions and he said, you’ve been working for him, but it’s not a full time job and now you got to move on and he explained, it’s a scholarship job. Now you’re done with school. Would you be interested in coming out, I’d like to interview you for a job I’ve got. So, I go to this guy’s, so go out. At the time I was landscaping and I was putting in many dish satellite like this dish, I was putting that was brand new thing. I was putting those in. So, I had a couple jobs. I was working my butt off and Little was still going to school and she’s still playing ball and I’m, supporting her and going to her games and so, I go out and interview with this guy and I sit down across from him and he says, you come highly recommended. Robin Carroll said, you’re a real hard worker, you’re an initiative taker. You’re a self-starter.

He doesn’t have to look over your shoulder just that, he said, that’s what we’re looking for and I tell this story to our institute every year. I sit down across from him and he rolls out a massive set of blueprints and he said I need to hire a guy, because we’re getting ready to go into a major expansion phase. We’re going to build a five acre lake, we’re going to build six new cabins, we’re going to do a dining hall renovation and expansion and we’re going to build a new bath house and I need somebody to come in and basically work with general contractor and oversee this. Jon, I’d never built anything. I built a bird house out of Popsicle sticks in VBS when I was in sixth grade. That’s the only thing I’d ever built.

Jon

A five acre lake, here we come.

Brody

Yeah. So, seven acres need to be logged and clear cut and then, five surface acres to build this lake. So, he’s showing me these blueprints. I might as well have been looking at hieroglyphics like, Hammurabi stone or whatever. I don’t know what I’m looking at and I’m acting like he’s showing me we’re going to, here, we’re going to cut, we’re going to build the dam here and you’ll see the elevation change here and I don’t know what I’m looking at, he’s showing me stuff. I’m just like, oh yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, sir and he says, you think you can handle this, is this all in your wheelhouse? I said, yes, sir. I needed a job. I didn’t want to keep putting in meat dishes. I wanted to do something, I wanted to do and I got excited about this job because I loved working at Liberty Expedition. So, this camp, it was like, this is going to be awesome if I can get this job, but I don’t know construction, I don’t know. Yes, sir, I can do it and so he said…

Jon 

Can I pause you one second? Listen, this is a side note for any young people listening, there is a leadership lesson here where somebody taught me this when I first moved to LA, you don’t say no to a job, you say yes and you figure it out,

Brody

Yeah, a 100%

Jon

It’s especially in the day and age of, youTube and you could figure it out and a lot of times, that’s how you learn a trade or I don’t and then, you figure it out. So, I just, I thought about that as you’re talking, it’s like, because that and that’s ingrained in you. You’re a person that’s like, oh, you teach yourself, mentally; you’re like I can figure things out. Just because I don’t know something does not mean that that’s a closed door.

Brody 

Yeah, I don’t say no, I can’t do this, the words I can’t or I cannot that I’m like, I will not have that in my vocabulary and yeah, I told the guy, I can do it and he said, you think you can handle it? Yes, sir, I can do it and so, he said, we’ll call you. This was on a Monday and he said we’ll call you by the end of the week. Well, he called me either that night or the next night, he said, we want to offer you the job. I think part of it was he thought he was getting more out of me than what I was bringing to the table, but he didn’t have a lot of money and he couldn’t go hire a legit general contractor type guy to come, it was a $20,000 a year salary, which, for me at that time, was great, it was, that would be today’s equivalent of $40,000 and so, I was elated, I was ecstatic and so, I said, well, I need to put in a two week notice and my plan was, I’m going to put in the notice and figure out how to do some of this stuff. So, I called Little’s granddad. I said, hey, I just took a job where I got to build a five acre lake and he, I remember, he cussed, he was funny dude, he loved the Lord, but he was rough around, he was he was a World War Two he was a Marine, fought in the South Pacific. Was on Taro, deacon at his church, but he had a pretty he had a Marine’s vernacular he’s like, you dumb. What are you stupid? What are you thinking and he laughed, he’s like, you’re so stupid, he said, that’s kind of, why I like you.

I said, well, I need you. Could you come up here and teach me the first couple weeks I’m on the job? I just, could you come up here and just show up to work with me and help me figure this stuff out and so and I called Little’s dad and said he had been a general contractor and I said, I got to build a dining hall expansion, a renovation. We’ve got to knock out a wall and do an addition on a dining hall and it was going to be a, 3000 square foot expansion, just a dining room, but I remember the first week on the job, one of the first things I did was write a $75,000 check for a bulldozer at a caterpillar dealership and I’d never done anything and so, Little’s granddad came up and we started cutting logging and clearing for that lake, he didn’t come up right away. I think I started. I knew how to run chainsaw, so I started cutting trees and clearing for that lake and then, I got him to come up and teach me how to run that dozer for two weeks. I just do it on the side of the dozer for eight, ten, hours a day, while he operated it and he was pushing dirt and moving stuff and then, I would jump down and run chainsaw. So, I worked with him, he was so great. His name was Dorsey Coleman. Moe’s middle name is Dorsey. We named him after him, everybody called him big D I worked with Big D for a week. So, I kind of, learned enough about it. So, that was my first “ministry job.”

When I was at Liberty Expeditions, it was a ministry job, but I wasn’t doing any ministry type stuff, but when I was at that camp, all along, I’m planning on going into a career field and my heart started to really love the camp world, but you know as well as I do, but it’s hard to explain this to people, Snowbird is not like a camp, it’s such a different, Snowbird is a culture driver. It’s an equipping platform, we do, so much more than run camps, but that grew out of being at these other camps and realizing this is an incredible platform. You could go do something a lot more dynamic than just have a week of camp with a kid and get him pumped up and excited, but I was working on the maintenance and construction side. We built the six cabins. I hired a guy named Kenny Osgood; he was a framer from California. He was a guy from Southern California,

Jon

Paul [Indiscernible]

Brody

That’s right, one of your boys and he had moved over here rough, he’s a framer. I was like, I need a framer. I start asking around, found this, somebody said, hey, here’s a guy and anyway, I hired this guy. I paid him more than I was making, because I had a budget to work with. So, I paid this framer and he was a really good framer and we framed up, dried in and roofed these six cabins and Kenny Osgood worked with me and we got that done and then, it was easy to finish them from there, because they were rustic cabins, Snowbird cabins. We’re building a house, I didn’t have to put in cabinets and trim and it was just slap up some OSB. I just needed to be able to build a structure. So, I learned how to frame working with Kenny Osgood and then, learn how to run that, equipment with Little’s granddad and pretty soon Little came and she graduated that next year and came to work with me and so, we spent several years working at that camp and it was there the Lord put the desire to start snowboarding in our hearts, because we just saw what a cool platform a high adventure camp could be in terms of really discipling kids well.

Jon 

Was there any like, services or speakers or moments you just like, maybe something was like, dang, pricked your heart a Little bit and was like, or just being in that complete environment, you were just moving more towards man I love, want to reach teenagers for Christ.

Brody 

It was, well, what it was, what I remember really well, was realizing I could be myself and lose myself. So, I didn’t have to be somebody I wasn’t in that world, I could lose myself in Christ, but I could be myself, I don’t have to try to be and so, I wasn’t, I didn’t start off as a preacher and something that, I think, is important lot of times, people will ask about the call to preach, do you remember the call to preach and I always just say, when you look at the pastoral epistles, when the qualifications for pastors, overseers, elders are laid out, it says, If anyone desires, if you don’t desire it, you aren’t being called to it. I believe that Jon because people say I fought the call. I wrestle with the call. Most of those dudes don’t make it. It’s some other pressure. My dad’s a case in point. My dad was in ministry, I think because his dad and uncle were pastors and I don’t think, I don’t know what my dad was doing, but he would say, I fought the call to preach. I fought it and I fought it and I fought it and I remember when I became when I started preaching. Once Snowbird got going, I remember this moment where I realized I don’t ever remember getting called to preach, my desire started to shape to this and so.

Jon 

I remember struggling with that at Liberty, because, again, I didn’t grow up in the church and I didn’t know that language and people, oh, when did God call you to ministry? God and I couldn’t give an answer, but I just knew, after I got saved, I had such a strong desire for other people to know Jesus and it says, anyone who desires the office of a bishop desires a good thing and I remember reading that and having so much freedom, because I’m like, it says desires and this is the, who wants to do this for a living? You know what I mean? it’s like, hey, you’re going to make no money and it’s going to be really hard and all the things and you’re like, yeah, sign me up, but it’s like, you have this deep desire. You want people to know Jesus so bad. You’re like I’m going to figure it out.

Brody 

Yeah, for sure, to answer your question, I don’t remember a specific person that really impressed anything on me. It was more I realized this is a world this where I fit. I fit here and I had looked at, my degree was in criminal justice and I had looked at the world of federal law enforcement, I did my internship with US Marshals and realized, oh, I’m not for that world, being like, it just wasn’t a good fit for me, I got friends now that are retired federal agents. We got several that come to our adult conferences here every year and I have so much respect for those guys that I just realized I wasn’t for that world. I don’t think I could make it in that world and so, being able to start this thing where I could be myself, but lose myself, it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about building, my father in law and I started the camp with our wives, my wife and her parents, that’s, Little and I and her parents started it and I just learned early on I could be myself and so, the person that made the deepest, most lasting impression on me is two people. My father in law, Steve Coleman, aka the big kahuna, he basically wrote me a blank check to be myself and say you better be basically, he never said these words, but he was who he was and it freed me up to be who I was and we were enough alike. Then I think a lot resonated with me. We’re very different in a lot of ways too, but he basically showed me.

You just be who you are and he was a larger than life person he’s 6.5, 100 pounds, so he physically imposed, large, but he’s just a big personality and so, I early on learned a lot from him to just be you, be yourself and I always have been. I don’t try to be, I haven’t, never tried to sound like a different preacher. I never emulated anybody. Just be me and I never and I’ve tried, it is so freeing. The other person that did that for me was a guy named Rob Hester, who I talk about often and Rob Hester was the first youth pastor that brought students here, he brought 30 kids up and they, did a camp out and he was a personal friend to mine and my father in law’s and so, we didn’t really it wasn’t like a week of camp. They came up and camped out and stayed in the old cabin on the property and he did devotions with them every night and we just worked and cleared brush. That was this the year before we physically started the camp and that was in the summer of ‘97 the first campers, official campers came in 98, but Rob and I developed a deep and lasting friendship that lasted for 10 years, he died at age 36 in 2007 he had a blood clot going to his heart and he died suddenly, but he was a dynamic preacher and communicator, and he was the one that would say to me.

Don’t you ever not be who you are, you be yourself God has given you a unique personality and a unique skillset and ability to impact people in a certain way, but don’t try to be somebody you’re not. So, that was real free and for me. So, those are the two guys that probably impressed me the most young in my ministry, was my father in law and Rob Hester and they’re the two guys that pushed me to preach. They’re like, hey, you need to be in front of folks. You need to be saying things because people are listening and you use the platform God’s given you and then, the third person that came along kind of, affirmed that was Austin Ramel, who you know, Austin, is a longtime partner of this ministry, but a personal friend. So, those are guys that I think just enabled me from a young age and my, I didn’t preach my first sermon until I was almost 30 and so, by then I, I had a lot of reps in life, I shared worked at Liberty and traditions. So, my first the first sermon I preached was in summer of 2001 I preached the Wednesday night sermon. I was 29 years old. First time I ever preached. Like preached and it was not yeah. I’m sure it was a train wreck, most people’s first sermon. Anyway, I preached it nine times. We did nine weeks of Camp back then, I preached it nine times.

Jon 

Hey, so if you’re listening and you’re older, in your 20s and you think, hey, I missed it. I don’t have a degree, or my M div, or whatever they say, that’s not true, the Lord can call you, can use you know what I mean and so, that’s all. I didn’t know that. That’s awesome.

Brody 

Yeah. My first sermon, I was 29 and I didn’t preach regularly till I was 30, but what I did do from about age 22 I started to really commit to daily, read the Bible, spend time in the word and so, I began a legitimate daily devotion life. I was a three year old Christian and a new husband I was like, I got a legit, I can’t sit down and read our daily bread and a couple verses each morning. I want to spend some time with the Lord. We’d start we’d moved here and Little and I were the only people living here in Andrews and we’re living in the old cabin that was her grandmother’s and I sit there, I can remember, it’s dark at five down under those red oak trees. It’s dark at 5.30, so far up, tucked up against the mountain and so, in the winter, it’s just dark so early and we didn’t have a TV, we didn’t have and I was just sitting there and reading and studying and I started to read theology and Bible commentaries and just become a student of the word and journal and write and handwrite stuff, just pages and pages and pages and I started to really enjoy studying the Scripture and I didn’t know I was studying it exegetically or expository. I didn’t know the terminology. I just knew I wanted to be very careful to understand what that’s saying. So, the Lord was showing me through His word who he was.

So then, when the time came for me to start preaching, this is crazy. When I was asked to preach for the first time, it was kind of, out of necessity. It was like camp grew faster than we thought it was going to grow and we thought we were going to bring in outside speakers that my father in law would preach and we bring in outside speakers and I was going to do rec trainings, kind of, staff leadership and then, maintenance and construction, because we thought we’re going to be small and so, I can wear all these different hats and then, there was a need for somebody to preach and so, I was like, I’ll do it that first summer and that first summer that I preached, which was like our third or fourth summer that I actually preached my first sermon and I remember just saying, what am I going to preach? Well, I had five years’ worth of handwritten verse by verse journals, so I just went and pulled a passage that I loved and I had worked through that passage and I just created my own outline from my journals. It’s almost like and so, just like, only say what the Bible says.

Jon 

It’s like Paul in Arabia you were just digging that well deep and didn’t even know it.

Brody

Spelled as just for me and Jesus

Jon 

Yeah that’s awesome. A lot of times when I think about, being married and think about family relationships and all that kind of, stuff and knowing, when we came to Camp, Big Kahuna was still here when we first came to Camp and you’re 100% right, larger than life, figure and personality and big man, how was that because you’re newly married, so you’re trying to establish your own family, but then there’s this dynamic where you’re working with your father in law and it sounds like you guys had a pretty good relationship. You know what I mean, he’s, teaching you construction when you’re at that other camp and stuff, but I’m sure that was both a blessing and a challenge.

Brody 

Oh yeah, Oh, yeah, oh man, there were some moments, it was a blessing and a challenge. There were things about it that were so fun. We got so close, he and I. I remember so when we started the camp, I had a truck. Little and I had a pickup truck that everybody here knows as the big nasty that truck still exists. It was a 1990 model Dodge truck with a 12 valve Cummins diesel in it, first generation of the Cummins diesel in Dodge trucks, we put half a million miles on that truck. We use that truck as a tractor, as a landscaping tool, we built camp with that truck. The first phase of it, that was the only piece of equipment we had was my work truck and we were going to go in 1998 so we’ve been here a year and we decided to go to Wisconsin. Mug still lived in Wisconsin, my executive partner Matt Jones. My two executive partners at Snowbird are Matt Jones and Hank Parker Jr. So, Matt Jones still lived in Wisconsin, he worked at a for profit sports camp, a really elite high end professional athletes trained there and so, but they were big hunters and so, we were going to go up and spend a week with them and we were going to grouse hunt, bird hunt, his dad’s a big bird dog guy, beautiful rolling hill country in that part of Wisconsin. I’d never been up there and I’d been on a visit, but I never spent time there. So, we’re going to go up and spend a week. So, me, my father in law, my wife and my mother in law, all four are going to drive up there in this truck called the big, nasty single cab truck, not an extended cap, single bench seat and so, I went to big D’s, Little’s granddad, who I mentioned earlier, he was a junk man, he was a Fred Sanford kind of, guy, he had a bunch of old chicken houses full of just, he just swapped and traded and sold junk and I found a popper shell, a camper shell that would go on that truck that I could make work and I got it to fit and we built, we put a piece of plywood, built a bed in the back of that rolled out, made like a pallet, put a Mattress in there. What we’re going to do is the two guys were going to sit in the front and drive through the night and we needed to take a nap.

We’d jump in the back of the truck and the girls would drive and so, four of us in a single cab pickup truck with a camper shelf doesn’t fit and a piece of plywood turned into a bunk bed and we’d slid all of our gear under that plywood and so, we start out riding up the road and the girls start out in the back and we’re going to we leave. I remember my brother had a football game, he played at Western Carolina. So, we leave. They played at Wofford, which is Wofford is in Spartanburg, South Carolina. So, we drive from Andrews, from here in that truck, opposite direction of Wisconsin, we drive three hours, two and a half, three hours over to Spartanburg, South Carolina, watch my brother’s football game. Leave Spartanburg, South Carolina and head north to go to Wisconsin and the girls were laid in the back of the truck and remember we’re going through Indiana. It’s like three in the morning and they’re banging on the door because the rain was it was raining and it that camper leaked. So, we pull into a truck stop, buy a bunch of plastic bags and bail up all of our belongings, because they’re going to get wet in the back of this truck and then, all four of us cram in the front of that truck and we drive from Indiana to northern Wisconsin, four wide and he was like, he’s a big dude,

Jon

He’s a big dude understatement.

Brody

So, we’re slammed in this truck. So, we had adventures like that in the early days of camp, we made a commitment that if anybody came to Snowbird, we would go to their church and visit them and so, we would have a church come to Snowbird and then, within the next month or two, the four of us would go to that church on a Wednesday night and be with their youth or Sunday morning and a lot of times he was getting to preach in churches on Sunday mornings, because he was an evangelist, he’d done a lot of traveling and preaching and so, we not only built the camp together, but we did all the behind the scenes stuff going to church, nowadays, a lot of us go and speak in churches or at events and it’s great, but it’s not what it was back then. Back then, it was survival. It was like we have to cultivate, oh, a group came here. Okay, how do we now really cultivate that relationship, so that we can keep them coming and keep building and developing a partnership, because we really were committed to the mission the Lord had given us, which was to equip and partner with the church. So, if a church came, we went and it was me and him a lot of times to just the two of us. Usually the girls went with us.

Because, Little and I didn’t have kids those first three years and so, we had so many great memories building the camp those first few years together then, all the construction we did just the three of us, me and him and Little, built the, did the construction and we had another lady that was living here and working with us at the time, her name was Lou and she had Little and I had really taken her in and she came from a past of abuse and she was our agent. She lived here with us and so, it was just really the four of us building the camp and Little’s mom would do just like office stuff and so, we have so many memories just carved into the property there. I can’t go anywhere and not see memories from those early days, but yeah, there were times I can remember multiple I think I’ve shared some of these with you. I can remember a couple of specific we’re in each other’s face. I don’t know how it didn’t come to blows, because he was a hot tempered man. I was hot tempered dude and you’re just, we’re both super intense, we’re very intense people and so, there was time where and you think people might think, how, why were you in each other’s faces?

Oh, we didn’t agree on something, or we were both just hard, charging, passionate people and then, we’re just when you’re living and serving that close to somebody. We were 24/7, building this thing. We’re breathing it; every facet of life is connected. We’re eating half of our meals together and I’m thankful and I tell young couples Little and I the first three years we were married, we didn’t live near either of our parents, so when we moved here to start the camp, we had three years of marriage, doing ministry at the other camp and not having our parents around. So, we were good, we were solid together as a couple and I think that’s, we could do that, but it was intense, it was something and a lot of it was one of the first moments of real tension was we were, I’ve probably told the story on NSR before, but we’re, in our first year of this thing and we had brought a guy onto our board of directors. There was a third partner that was going to before, as we were forming the board, there was it was me and Kahuna and another guy named Tom that was going to be the third partner and he and Kahuna had worked in church ministry together, so Snowbird was going to be started by the three of us and this another reason I wasn’t going to preach. Tom and Kahuna, we’re going to do all the preaching.

They’re both preachers and I wasn’t. Well, Tom had his primary financial supporter that was funding him being in the work. So, Tom was fully funded. Well, I was shoeing horses and hanging drywall on the side. I was working for a guy clearing land. So, I worked on Mondays in a local shop, doing tire changes, oil changes, front end alignments. So, I worked Mondays in town. Little was working a part time job. I was making money on the side running a chainsaw. I’m a blacksmith farrier by trade, so I’m shoeing horses and this guy, Tom good dude, but he raised his support and he was just full time with Snowbird. Well, they wasn’t no Snowbird yet. We haven’t got kids coming yet. My buddy Rob Hester had brought some kids who I mentioned and this guy brings in a man named Jim. I won’t say his last name, but Jim was a very wealthy multi-millionaire businessman out of Atlanta and he wanted to put up, I don’t know a million bucks up front and build the first phase of camp out, which, back then, we could have done for a million bucks. It was going to be like a lodge, a swimming pool, some basketball courts and enough to bring 60 kids in at a time and he was going to fund it, but he wanted to have, a seat, he want to be chairman of our board of directors. Well, he hadn’t…

The Vision didn’t come to him while he was clearing for a lake in southwest Virginia five years earlier, trying just the Lord, this had been forged in our hearts, from a different place and this guy rolls in loves, praise the Lord, he loved the vision, but he’s like, oh, yeah and what it was, he had always wanted to build some sort of a retreat center and so, I think he thought well intentioned he could partner up with us, but he wanted control of it. It didn’t sync up with what I saw as our vision and so, Kahuna and I had a pretty sharp disagreement, because Kahuna realized and I feel for Kahuna here, because he was trying to raise, he was doing the fundraising. So, he wasn’t working secondary jobs, he was going out and trying to raise money. I was working to pay my own way in life, while we started to build the camp and then, this guy comes in and says, I’ll fund it all, but here’s the caveat, we’re going to do it this way and but, I knew we had a heart for how we wanted to run the ministry. We had a vision for what we wanted the mission of snowboard to be and it didn’t sync up. Pretty sharp disagreements and I remember having a conversation where I told him, if this is the direction we go, now’s the time to decide it and I’m out. I’m not this isn’t a threat. I’m leaving.

It’s like, that’s okay, but that’s not what I want to be a part of and so, I’ll just dip out. I’ll stay in the area and help where I can, but I’m not going to get on board with this and we worked through it and Kahuna, then there was a point where he said, yeah, this is definitely not the fit. We don’t want to do this and we told that guy, no we’re not interested in the partnership. So, he withdrew his monthly support and said, well, I’m going to go in a different direction and then, that guy, Tom left with him. So, it left me in Kahuna and I remember there was this, oh, we just lost our one big donor, monthly donor and that was the first year of snowbirds existence, but then the next it was like, within a month, a guy stepped up and gave us a $25,000 donation. Said, I want you to build a cabin with this. So, we built our first cabin and bought two outfitters tents off of that. So, that was things like that were tense, super intense,

Jon 

So, good, but I think too, two things that stick out to me. Well, you shared one, Snowbird, I feel like has always stayed so grounded and you I don’t even know you realize, even in sharing it like, how principled you guys were in your decision making, the Lord had given us a vision and you’re like, no, this is the vision and direction and anybody listening, if you’re in ministry or just life, the temptation to go the financial side, because it would be easier and you need money. We’re not saying you can’t build a camp without money, but, trusting the Lord’s direction that he gives you and saying no to that. That’s, I can understand that challenge and then, you guys still being on board and being united and I thought it was interesting too, because, the early days of Snowbird, you guys going all those churches together with Big Kahuna and just, if you come up here, in the summer and when we can in the, retreat season, we’ll have fires together and youth pastors come to the fire and it’s such a relational ministry at its core, in all aspects and it’s not just a, one of our core values, but there’s this relational side that I think people fall in love with because even as me, as a youth pastor, remember coming up here and just feeling like, those are my brothers in Christ and I felt a genuine care, oh, I could have these conversations in ministry that you can’t really have and so, it’s interesting to hear where that kind of, was birthed and how it’s just a part of, the story, you know what I mean.

Brody 

Yeah, that guy, Rob Hester, he’s first person ever said to me and I’ve used this line with other people and I’ve heard other people say it, but he said, hey, don’t ever, how did he say it? He said, don’t ever change, he said, be sanctified, but don’t ever change, you’re a unique person and God has gifted you and built you to do this, to carry out this calling and that kind of, freed me up to just say, okay, my hands on the plow. Am not turning left or right, we know what… I was so sure of the calling and still am to this day. Have no question in my mind what we’re supposed to be doing.

Jon 

Man, a question came to my mind because, early days, you guys are building it together, you both get gave your life to this ministry. You’re doing everything together so you’re close and there’s the family dynamic and I don’t know if you could, I don’t even know the question I want to ask, but there was such a healthy transition from Big Kahuna, because I know he kind of, led the camp and then, eventually he steps away and you took over and a lot of times when there’s on the outside, when it seems like there’s a seamless transition. You might not realize everything, but it just seemed like, oh, yep and that’s how it’s supposed to be and how it was so good, is it, I don’t know. Is there…? Can you give me some insight in that, how you guys transition? So, well, I get, I don’t know if that’s the right question.

Brody 

Well, it’s cool to hear you say that it seemed seamless from the outside, because it was rough. It was hard. there was a lot going on. It’s hard to talk about, because I want to make sure, he went to be with the Lord in 22 I want to sure his memory is honored, but he was going through some personal difficulties, marriage difficulties and family stuff outside of Little and I, but within his family and there was a point where it was like, okay, the plan of succession. We always knew that it was always that he and I were doing it together and he was the leader. I was a 25 year old dude. When we started it, he was a 48 year old dude, or whatever, 45 year old guy and so, then we moved as we started to grow, we started to talk about the transition of me taking over. I hate to use the word taking over, stepping into that, leadership, that CEO, president role, but like any man, when it came time for him to step aside; I think it was premature in his mind. It felt premature. Think he wanted to go further and longer, stay more in it, but he had a host of medical problems and then, he had some, there was some struggle going on I want to be careful how I word that, but there was some personal struggle within his marriage, with his home and within his family and I just remember he and I having some hard conversation where I just said, Listen, it’s okay let’s help you finish well, let’s help you retire and finish this part of the race and so, how do we do this, so that you are honored, the integrity the ministry is intact and we create a plan of succession and transfer of leadership, not just to me, but let’s bring in a team. I said I always called him Big Un. So, everybody called him the Big kahuna. I called him Big Un and I said, Big Un, I don’t want to be a one man guy. I don’t want to be a ministry that rides and on the shoulders of one dude.

I don’t ever want to be a celebrity pastor ministry and so, I want to build a team as we’re preparing for you to move out and exit and so, that was where Jeff Cole was a guy that came in who know, our listeners aren’t going to know that name, but I’m thankful for Jeff Cole, who’s a brother who is now in the full he’s a full time military service, but he was a CPA, was an accountant and we needed somebody to step in and get us moving in the right direction financially, with financial accountability, responsibility and decision making and so, Jeff came on board and guided that season and Matt Jones Mugs, that was the guy I wanted. I was like, I want that guy to come partner with me on this, because I trust Matt Jones is 100% comfortable behind the scenes, he is literally a brilliant mind when it comes to operations, admin, from spread, we give him so much grief about his spreadsheets, he’s a spreadsheet guy, but he’s got, he’s so organized, he’s so categorized and we needed that, because Kahuna and I were both just wild, shoot from the hip visionaries and a lot of things were chaotic and so, we were able to say, hey, as you transition into retirement, let’s bring someone in that can come alongside Jeff Cole in the next season, fact what we would call phase two, which I think lasted from him starting to transition out in the late 2000s and really was done. The last time he ever preached was, I think, 2011 but as he’s transitioning out that second phase of Snowbird’s growth, I think, was from then to COVID and I think we’re now in the third big phase. So, saying all that to say it was very difficult and it means a lot to hear that that was not perceived from the outside, because we worked, I lost so much sleep, I had health issues as a result of the tension and stress of all that. I ended up hospitalized at one point with some heart stuff. and the doctor said, he said, this is 100% stress related and ended up with a cardiologist and having to see that person regularly for a season of life and so, it means a lot that it was a smooth transition and yeah, the Lord blessed it,

Jon 

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you just sharing that because I I’ve experienced that where I, being in ministry as long I’ve been in seasons where I’ve literally had health issues as a result of the stress and the pressure and you’re wanting to do it well, you know what I mean and even if you do it well and you’re a man of integrity and it doesn’t mean it’s smooth. In fact, if you’re doing it well and you’re being a man of integrity, it’s probably a rougher road, just that’s real. I just want to highlight one thing, because I remember you and Spencer and Rob, we were talking outside and you were talking about, just the anointing, in a sense, that Big kahuna had on his life in ministry and how, I forget the exact story, but there was a group that came in and y’all were like, we just need big kahuna to preach this one and he came in there and just laid the word down and it just shifted the environment, you know what I mean.

Brody 

Yeah, he only had about, so Big Kahuna, one of the reasons he had to eventually transition out. So, he transitioned out of the day to day or the week in week out preaching, he started transitioning, that first summer in 2001 that I preached, I did one sermon and he did the rest. Then the next summer is when we went to the model where I would do the evenings, he would do the mornings. So, he would do four. I would do I would do five. I would do the five evening services and but, what became and then, that was the rhythm we kept for the next few years he stepped away, took a sabbatical for some personal stuff in ‘05 and I did all the preaching and that was the first year I had Rob preach one sermon and Spencer preach one sermon and then, I did seven, I think and so, that was when we started to build a teaching team and that’s when I was like, okay, I want to build a team of teachers and I’ve never wanted it to be a one guy. You know what I mean? one dude is, the guy, when people come to Snowbird, they’re like, oh, we get to go and hear, Pastor so and so, we get Brody’s going to be the guy that people, my mom was here last week visiting for the day and we had a Christian, large group of, oh, it was when Southside was here. So, we had, we had a group of church here two weekends, three weekends ago and my mom walks in and sits down beside some kids.

At a meal and my mom’s crazy and fun and goofy and wild and she’s like, hey guys and she’s talking to them, she said, I’m Brody’s mom and there’s a kid in that youth group named Brody and they’re like, what? They were so confused and she’s like, no Brody, the preacher and they didn’t know who I was. case in point, that’s perfect and there’s a time where the Lord uses there’s some people that connect with your name and they know you and then, the Lord uses that, but I don’t, but anyway, so as we grew and when he and I were sharing in the preaching and it started to get to get to the point where he wasn’t going to preach anymore. Part of it was he only had about seven, he had about seven sermons that he just did over and over and over, which is that’s kind of, what evangelists do. Like most evangelists will prepare a series of sermons, maybe each year and for those that don’t know an evangelist, what I mean by that is what Jon and I understand that to be is a person that goes around and preaches guest preaches at conferences and events and back in those days, stuff, there was no internet. Now, if an evangelist is going around preaching, you got to be careful, because his same sermon will end up on YouTube 50 times.

But, evangelists go and preach the same sermon at every conference for five years. So, Kahuna had had like a quiver full of sermons and they were bangers, they were good, he was dynamic in his delivery, in his illustrations, in his personality and he’s physically imposing, but he only had seven sermons and he would preach them masterfully, but there was a point where at Snowbird. It was like, I said, I remember having a conversation where I was like, Big Un, you got to, I need you to prepare new sermons this year, all new sermons and it was like, oh, this is going to be hard and so, he ended up just doing two or three sermons and we filled that extra one in, because he wasn’t a week to week pastor preacher, the dynamic you’re talking about. There were his sermons. I could, most of us could quote him, he had preached them so many times his sermon on the 23rd Psalm he walked through Philip Keller’s book. A shepherd looks at the 23rd Psalm and that’s how he prepared it, he prepared that sermon in the 80s. The last time I heard him preach that? I bet it was the 1,000th time he preached it and it was almost it was verbatim every time, but it was so good, I literally never got tired of listening to it, because he was an anointed communicator and he believed it as much the 1,000th time as he did the 100th time and the Scripture says God calls some to be evangelists and that people argue, well, that means a gift of personal evangelism.

But, I think God calls some people to be that style of preacher that Kahuna was and so, there were times in the story you’re talking about, we had this group, Christian school group and that and just those are the toughest students to preach to, because they’ve heard it 1000 times and they have chapel service twice a week and they have Bible every day and they just kind of, fold their arms and slunk, slump down in the seat, going to hunch over and just like they’re not impressed and these kids were, it was a Christian school that was, I don’t think any of the kids were true believers and they were, it was a school from, the guy that was here, that was their leader, he wanted to be their buddy, he was a young guy and it was a school. It was a senior class of it was less than 20 kids and we were frustrated, each of us had taught and Kahuna was kind of, retired at this point, it was he had stopped preaching and I remember just calling him up and saying, hey, you come over here and preach the shepherd sermon to these kids and I gave him the context his Christian School. I don’t think any of them are saved. They’ve heard it all and he came over and he preached and he had them meeting out of his hand man he would bring thunder and lightning and firestorm and then, he’d be crying over the same illustration he had told 100 times and it would bring him to tears, he was such an emotional, visceral person and God used it. It was powerful and yeah, those kids, they just God changed those kids lives through him preaching that time.

Jon 

Man, praise God for, when you have a conversation like that, you see how God has had his hand on this ministry in different seasons and use different people and praise God for Big Kahuna and his life and his investment in this ministry in that season because wouldn’t be here.

Brody 

We wouldn’t be here.

Jon 

No, wouldn’t be here without him.

Brody 

We would not exist without him, would not exist. Well, I’m sitting here now, right smack dab in the middle of camp, our work day is winding down and the wind is picked up. Leaves are falling. It’s just, I just, I’m so nostalgic, listening to that, thinking about that, the story of Snowbird, how it started, where we come from, just good fun, early stories of God’s favor and grace and it was meaningful for me and hope it was for you as a listener. If you’re new and you stumbled across this, go to SW outfitters.com and check out who we are and what we do. Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the church in this generation. We’re here to equip and grow the church, to partner with the church, to proclaim the Gospel, to disciple and ground folks in the teaching of Scripture, to develop leaders, to train men and women and we’re thrilled to be here and God’s favors on this ministry. So, check it out. Might be an event that we’re getting ready to do that in the upcoming months, that maybe you come and join us for, got men’s events coming up, marriage events coming up, women’s events coming up, college event and tons of student ministry opportunities. So, check us out. We’ll come back next time and finish part two.