Remi- From the Bronx to the Battlefiled: Part #1

This is Darren Kuhn with the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we search the ancient paths to find ways that God brings light into a dark world and helps set men free from the struggles that we all face on a day-to-day basis. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it. Share it.

But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Previously on Lantern Rescue They already knew where my mom, dad, and my children were at. I was very scared and I proceeded to get the passport.

I already knew what was coming. Another friend lent me the money to get a passport and a ticket to come to the Dominican Republic, and they all helped me with the passport application and process. Welcome to Lantern Rescue, a ministry program dedicated to bringing light into the darkness of human trafficking. It's time to light the way to freedom. This is Lantern Rescue. We tell the stories, we talk about rescues, and we empower you to do something about it.

William Wilberforce once said, Let it not be said I was silent when they needed me. This is Lantern Rescue. Alright guys, thank you so much for joining our Lantern Rescue podcast today. So for our listeners that are joining us today, you are really in for a treat. I'm here with Austin, one of our team members, and we're excited to introduce Remy as well. Lantern Rescue's guest, Remy, is actually, if you're not familiar with him, he is a former Navy SEAL, a celebrated author who's recently taken Hollywood by storm. And he's got starring roles in Ambulance, Terminal, and Transformers The Last Knight. And really, guys, if that's not enough to get you excited about who we've got here today with us, he's using this platform to ride our heart, really. It's really neat to see this happening.

But he's written, produced, and directed a short film that's focused specifically on one of the more rare parts of human trafficking, and that's organ harvesting. So without further ado, I would like to introduce to you guys Remy and Austin. Guys, how are y'all doing?

Doing great. Thank you for having me on. Absolutely.

I mean, we are so excited. This is just a really cool opportunity for us to just branch out of our normal podcast, right? And to give you an opportunity to share your heart with us, too. So, you know, tell us a little bit about your background because it is extensive and just amazing to read through. So I'd love for you to share that with our listeners.

Absolutely. I was born in Nigeria into a very wealthy family. My dad was a well-known engineer, philanthropist, businessman, you name it, he did it.

Super successful at everything that he did. And so because of his success, I was born into essentially, you know, riches. But unfortunately, in 1987, the Nigerian government stripped my father of his most valuable assets. And he died days later.

And we went from extremely rich to having zero, having nothing. My mom was American. She actually met my dad in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Natural History. And they, you know, fell in love and got married five months later. Then my mom moved to Nigeria with him.

And so being an American, she was of the mindset that there's no way she's raising her two sons at this point in Nigeria. And so she permanently relocated us to New York City, specifically the Bronx. And, you know, very rough, you know, Bronx, especially the 80s, cracked everything.

It was, you know, had exploded and was totally out of control. The mafia was still running around. I remember as a kid going into local bodegas and seeing mafia guys in suits, you know, come in and collect taxes. You know, drugs were all over the place, gangs, violence, shooting.

I mean, it was just a really bad situation. So that's kind of, you know, the environment I grew up in and, you know, essentially became a product of my environment. You know, stealing and selling drugs and eventually running high level scams where I was bringing in, you know, thousands of dollars a week as a teenager. Fast forward, I ended up getting involved in a deal with a drug deal, but it went bad. I sold them some products that were supposed to last for a certain amount of time.

They only lasted for a fraction of that time. And essentially my life and my mother's life were threatened. And that was my wake up call. That was the thing that along with the fact that there were people going to federal prison for the stuff that I was doing.

And I was just always able to be one step ahead of the law. And so, you know, those two situations, the drug dealer, you know, threatening me and people who I was working with going to federal prison, that kind of woke me up in a sense. I was just like, hey, I need to get out of this lifestyle or I'm going to end up dead on a prison.

And so I made the money back that made the drug dealer money back that I need to make. And then I kind of gave up the street life. And for six months I just sat in my apartment.

That situation happened in December of 2001. And so from January 2002 to June of 2006, I just did nothing. I didn't know what I was going to do. I just tried to figure things out. I was too proud for working at a fast food joint and I didn't want to go to college. I didn't have the confidence to go to college. And I just wanted to know that I did a good job of get rich quick schemes.

You know, and so I was trying to find my new get rich quick scheme that was legal and I couldn't find it. Finally, I was laying in my bed in June of 2002 and I heard this voice speak to me and tell me, you need to get out of here. You need to join the military. I truly believe that it was the voice of God because at that time I was totally contrary to authority and I hated the police.

I associated anybody in the uniform as a police officer, whether you were in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Paramedic, whatever you were. I just opposed you and I opposed the government system, so to speak. And so I battled with that voice. I was just like, there's no way I'm joined the military.

You know, I do not want to do that. And then finally, you know, after about 10 minutes of going back and forth with that idea, which I know was God wrestling with God, essentially, I looked around my bedroom and just realized, what else do you have left? I mean, you've been on this earth for going on 20 years and your life has amounted to absolutely nothing. And what are you going to do with yourself?

Just keep sitting here. And so I just kind of said, screw it, you know, let's see what this military thing is about. And so I got out of my room, got out of the apartment, walked down the street, I ran down the street I grew up on. And then I went to, first, the Marine Corps recruiter's office and sat there for about 15 minutes. Nobody showed up.

There was coffee on the desk, but nobody came in. And then I got up and went two doors down to the Navy recruiter's office. There was a Navy recruiter in there by the name of Tiana Redes. And she asked me what I wanted to do. And I told her I wanted to be a Navy SEAL because I was trying to oppress her. And the biggest way to oppress somebody, or at least I thought that the biggest way to oppress somebody was to tell her I was going to be a SEAL. And she laughed, of course, and then she had me take a practice ASVAB test. I took that passage to get into the Navy, but I didn't score high enough to become a SEAL. And then she ran my background and found out I had two runs off my arrest.

I had a warrant in New York and I had a warrant in New Jersey. And I got up and got ready to run out of the office. And she stopped me at the door and said, where are you going? I told her I was getting out of here. And she said, you know, there's nothing out there for you. And I was like, well, what do you want me to do here? She said, come back tomorrow.

And I said, for what? She said, just come back tomorrow. And she asked me if I had a suit.

I said, no. She asked me if I had nice, you know, collar shirts and nice pants and said I could find something. And so she told me, well, when you come back, come back, you know, properly dress.

And fast forward, I came back the next day and she was in her dressing room. And she took me to both judges. She took me to the judge in New Jersey and the judge in New York and essentially advocated on my behalf and told the judges, hey, this guy's trying to join the military after an act of war.

And, you know, he's made mistakes, but he still has potential. So you should, you know, you should help him out and expunge his record. And both judges unanimously expunged my record. And, you know, that's why I truly believe it was the voice of God that guided me that day because I get phone calls from people all the time. You know, not phone calls, but messages, DMs from people all over the country. And they asked me, they say, Remy, I have a record or I have misdemeanors, I have this, that, like, you know, I got like totes of speed and technology, legal issues.

And not all of these legal issues, but one small legal issue. And I know a recruiter won't touch me. Like, I can't get into the military.

Like, how did you do it? And I always say, you know, well, who's God? Because, you know, I obeyed his voice and then fast forward, I get to Marine Corps recruiter's office.

He's not there. And then I run to one recruiter who would help me out. And the thing with that is, if it was the other recruiter, I probably wouldn't have had that same outcome. I probably wouldn't have been allowed in because my record would have been ran and that was seen. Then there was a potential that that recruiter, not Tiana, would just put me on this list of can't join because of your record instead of work with me.

And, you know, thank God I was obedient and timing wise that Marine Corps recruiter was not in his office. And timing wise, Tiana was. And timing wise, Tiana was from the Bronx and she was an advocate for kids who had made mistakes. As a matter of fact, I later found out from her brother that when he got in trouble with the law, she came and she was in the Navy.

She flew back to the Bronx and worked with an Air Force recruiter to get him in the Navy, get him in the Air Force and get him out of the Bronx. She did that for a lot of other people. So I was strategically led to her. Unfortunately, she died two years after she got me into the Navy of a very rare autoimmune disease. But again, her decision truly changed the trajectory of my life.

And she also fudged the paper with the sequence of names. But I got to the Navy and, you know, that's when my journey towards becoming a CO started. I couldn't swim. So when I got to my first command, I would run three miles to the pool, try to figure it out and then run three miles back. I was skinny, but I just, you know, got a Bloods 234 documentary video cassette tape and a DVD, excuse me, and I watched those and taught myself how to work out. I got an ASVAB for Dummies book and taught myself how to get that proper academic scores. And, you know, within a year of checking into my command, I was checking out and got orders to Buds.

Made it through first phase, made it through second, got to second phase, ended up getting kicked out. And then I went back to First Marine Division this time as an infantry medic, did a year there and went back to SEAL training and made it through SEAL training. And then I spent the majority of my career, all my career on a West Coast team, West Coast teams, and had a great career. Then towards the end of my career, that's when I really felt, you know, it was time for me to leave. I had two sons and having been a kid who didn't grow up with her father, I didn't want to do the same to my two sons.

Not that I was fearful of death. It was more so just being gone because being a SEAL you're gone so much. And so I decided, you know, it's time for me to stay home and, you know, be a dad as much as I can. So I got out and then, you know, I was in grad school at the time, so I was getting my master's in organizational strategy and focused on going to business consulting full time. But that's when everything changed and I ended up, you know, about five months after I got out, I ended up in Hollywood. My first project, Transformers, and that just led to another project and another project and another project and, you know, gradually grew from an actor slash consultant to a writer to a writer director.

And, you know, I've been in business since 2016, so, you know, six years now. And, you know, it was all by God's divine guidance, I believe. I'm already left speechless. Like, your story is unreal. And the favor of God, I mean, you know, sometimes it just takes the right person believing in you to kind of push that forward, that momentum forward. And I think, I mean, that is incredible.

And to hear how God lined your steps, that is a testimony in itself. Wow, that's amazing. That is awesome. Well, we actually, that's the first part of what we got going, but we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back from break, we're going to dive into your new film coming out focused on human trafficking in really in a way that we don't often get to talk about. So for our listeners, in the meantime, while we're on break, take a moment to check out lanternrescue.org or get plugged into our social media for prayer needs and newsletter updates so that you can join us in the fight against human trafficking.

We'll be right back. Lantern Rescue is a USA based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern specializes in sending former US Special Operation law enforcement and intelligence personnel to partner with host nations and assist them in creating specialized units to combat ongoing security problems, such as genocide, terrorism, and human trafficking. Lantern Rescue is a federal law enforcement organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern Rescue is a USA based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern Rescue is a USA based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern Rescue is a USA based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. 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