I was introduced to missions when I was about eighteen years old. I got an opportunity to go to Southeast Asia on a ministry trip, and I loved what I was doing. During that time, I saw many opportunities in places like China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and India—areas where a lot of ministries weren’t working because of the danger involved. Some of the bigger organizations were hesitant to send people there, and disasters kept happening as well.

It was around that time I heard about another organization doing work in Iraq, right when ISIS was at full power in the Middle East. They were just starting to be pushed back, and I had the chance to go. I showed up in Iraq not really knowing what I was walking into. I became involved in a ministry that was right on the front lines. I remember coming down a road on a mountain, heading into the town of Sinjar in Northern Iraq, in the Kurdistan region. My translator pointed to a line on the horizon, telling me that everything beyond it was ISIS territory. I wasn’t scared; I wanted to go forward.

We went right down, well within reach of incoming mortars. On my first morning there, I was having breakfast with the team, still getting to know everyone. My back was against the back wall of the house, with a window right above my head. Suddenly, there was this massive boom that made us rock forward. The window flung open, and everyone was just looking around, wide-eyed. A mortar had landed and destroyed a house nearby. After breakfast, we went out and saw a big concrete house behind us, completely brought down. That was my introduction to life in Iraq.

Later, I went to Bangladesh with the same organization to work with the Rohingya refugee situation. I helped drill wells and tried to improve life for people living in desperate conditions. While there, a friend and I would come back to our place in the evenings after working in the refugee camp and start brainstorming. We had all these crazy ideas—forming a scuba diving team, a bomb squad, a whitewater rescue team. We wrote everything on the tiled kitchen wall, this entire list of dreams. That’s where the idea of Chazak started: just a bunch of guys brainstorming, believing we could do something big.

Eventually, I brought these ideas back and showed them to Dan Lapp. I laid out my plans, and he just kind of looked at the paper and walked away, leaving me worried I’d blown it. But a couple of days later, he returned the paper and told me I didn’t really understand what I had. He said he’d been working most of his life toward something like this, and he wanted to help me get it going.

From there, it all snowballed. We kept pulling more and more people in. Today, it’s incredible to be part of a team with so many talents. The best part is how many of them have come in saying they’ve been dreaming of this all their lives. They’re ready to join and go.

Our mission is to be an international search and rescue organization. Natural disasters, wars, all these crises will keep happening. I really hope Chazak becomes known for showing up in the worst places and pouring ourselves into people, no matter what the danger level might be.