Highlight: What is Mighty Oaks?

Apologia Studios

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00:00

So Jeremy, I'm just going to let you right now just tell everyone about Mighty Oaks, what you do with them, what the program does, and then we'll go from there.

00:08

Yeah, Mighty Oaks Foundation, we were founded at the end of 2011, really to help those veterans who have transitioned out of the military.

00:19

You remember 2011, kind of the height of the war in Afghanistan, still dealing with things in Iraq.

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We had a lot of folks coming home and just absolutely lost. Veteran suicide rates were extremely high.

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And our founder, Chad Robichaux, force recon guy, did eight combat tours in Afghanistan, came home a mess.

00:43

You can find videos about his testimony as well online. But in the process of that, he was introduced to a

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Christian guy who led him to Christ and then mentored him in biblical manhood, what it means to be a man.

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And he would tell you that in the process of that, he was able to move beyond the post -traumatic stress and the trauma and so many of these things that had controlled his life, just about ended his marriage.

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And when he went through all of that personally, he looked around and said, why isn't anyone sharing this with other veterans who are coming home?

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And so it's actually pretty interesting. Similar to Jeff, Chad has a background in mixed martial arts, fought in some pretty big promotions.

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He is a Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu black belt. He's been training Jiu -Jitsu for 35 years or something.

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So he had a Jiu -Jitsu school in Houston, closed the school down, moved to Colorado, invited some veterans to come up and spend some time with them and started teaching some of the principles that he had learned.

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He and I connected at that time. He had military background, of course, and because of his fighting and the rest of it, a lot of veterans wanted to come and be a part of what he was a part of.

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I was pastoring at the time. I had been in the Marine Corps. I was in Iraq in 2003, transitioned out of the

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Marine Corps, became a pastor. And Chad and I met at kind of the right time. He said, hey, why don't you come help me figure out how to put a program together?

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And that's what we did. We've been doing that ever since. And I could spend a lot of time talking about what we do, but in a nutshell, we help men and women who either are veterans, active duty service members, now more and more from the first responder community, police and fire, help them to understand how to move beyond the trauma in their lives.

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And that could be combat trauma. It could be trauma related to their services, police officers, firefighters.

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It may be family trauma. A lot of the folks that attend our programs are really dealing with things that started as children, whether it's sexual abuse, sexual trauma, you know, some of those things, family traumas.

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And then, you know, transitioning out of the military, a loss of identity, bad decisions on the other side of that.

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And so, we help them understand that what they've been through, what they've done, what they've experienced, does not define who they are.

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And we do that by bringing them to one of our facilities. We have four facilities across the country.

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They'll spend a week with us. And instead of approaching, you know, PTSD and those things from a clinical perspective, which they all have access to clinical help, we approach that from a biblical perspective.

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What does the Bible say about how we were created? Is there a creator? And if there is, what does that mean for our lives?

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How can we move forward with purpose and meaning? And man, it's been crazy. We've had just over 4 ,000 people attend one of those week -long programs.

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And just the change that happens, so many of the folks who attend, people think faith -based, well, that must mean that everyone who comes is a

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Christian. Most people are not. In fact, most of them end up at one of our sessions, one of our programs, because they've tried everything else and have nowhere else to go.

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And so, they may hate God. They may not believe in God. They may have had, you know, bad experience with church or religion or however they would say that in the past.

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But they need help and they don't know what else to do. So, they end up with us. And it's very much peer -to -peer.

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We have a room full of people similar to them. So, that facade, that wall that people put up, that is, you don't know what it's like to be me, to have experienced what

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I've experienced, don't talk to me. And a lot of veterans are kind of that way. They're now in a room where everyone has experienced something similar.

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All of our instructors have come through our program. They've also then gone through our leadership training process. It takes about a year.

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And so, it's very much peer -to -peer. It's very much, I don't have it all figured out, but I'm a little further down the road than you are.

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And I want to help you take the first steps to move forward. And God's blessed. And we've seen some incredible things happen.

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And then beyond that, we've written a number of books and put a lot of resources together. We do a lot of video stuff and testimonials, that kind of thing to help.

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And then speak to active duty units and veterans conferences. We've spoken to probably close to 200 ,000 people over the last 10 years or so in those conference settings, talking about trauma, what it is, what it isn't, spiritual resiliency, how to move forward, and those kinds of things.

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So, in a nutshell, that's it. And God's been very good to us. And we meet people like Luis, as you mentioned, and so many others.

05:03

Yeah. Amazing. Praise God for that. What is the meaning behind Mighty Oaks? Yeah.

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So, in Isaiah 61, it's a paraphrase, but it talks about those who are in the ashes becoming oaks of righteousness or trees of righteousness.

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And Chad would tell you when he and his wife, Kathy, were talking about what to call this thing they wanted to do.

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They looked at their own lives and said, really, we were in a burning heap, and God has turned that into something.

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And we would like to see that happen with others. And so, yeah, it's really a picture of what God can do in a life that seems hopeless and broken.

05:40

Very, very cool. Yeah. So, is this program free? Or does it cost something?

05:46

Or how does that work? Yeah. So, again, we've been blessed, and God's opened incredible doors and great connections and relationships.

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So, we're able to provide the program absolutely free. It doesn't cost anything to attend. And we made a decision a long time ago.

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Some people pushed back on it. Made a decision a long time ago. The people that we want to help are people who probably don't want to attend a program like ours.

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So, we're going to remove every barrier. All they need is a week. So, we pay for travel. We cover everything. There is zero cost to the person who attends.

06:15

Amazing. And where are the four locations at? Do you have a place? Yeah. We have a place in kind of our flagship, if you will, is in Northern Central California, if you're from California, we'll call it

06:27

Central California. But up in the San Luis Obispo area, Paso Robles, we have a ranch there that we use.

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Then in Junction, Texas, which is about an hour outside of San Antonio, we have a facility.

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There's a place in the town of Zanesville, Ohio. I don't know if you know Ohio, but it's outside of Columbus, Ohio.

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And then one place in Haymarket, Virginia, in Northern Virginia. And from time to time, we'll do kind of like one -off programs.

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There'll be a facility that opens and we'll go and do a program there. But for the most part, it's those four locations.

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And part of the reason, and again, this is God, part of the reason we're able to cover the cost of the programs and all of those things is because each one of those locations allows us to have as many weeks of programming as we'd like to at those locations.

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And they're incredible. Go on our website, you can see pictures. At no cost to us. So, we don't pay to use the facility.

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In most cases, we also don't pay for the food during the week. And the food's incredible. Each one of those, the owners of those properties have just said, we want

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God to use it. And if God can use it, then we'll pay for it. So, it's been, yeah, it's been incredible.

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And you're in Texas, correct? I am based in Southern California. Our headquarters is in the woodlands right outside of Houston, Texas.

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But we're kind of spread out all over the place. We have people everywhere. Gotcha. So, I mean, obviously you are able to make this happen through donations.

07:49

So, how does that, how does fundraising work for you guys? Yeah. I mean, the simplest thing is people find out about us.

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They go to our website and there's a place to give on there. We have many, many monthly supporters, people who give $25, give $20, give what they can.

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And then we've had some larger donors come along who have underwritten entire weeks of programs and a lot of other things.

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So, we're always out raising money. And that's, you know, it's funny, people, they kind of talk bad about raising money and look down on that.

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But what that enables us to do is then offer the program to as many men and women that would like to attend at no cost, again, for the program or travel.

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And so, it's just the generosity of people. We're in a good time in America as it relates to veterans.

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You know, we're not in the Vietnam era. We're not in the 80s where things were, you know, kind of a mess in the military and the public's perception of that.

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We're living at a time where people really do appreciate the military and they're putting their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

08:54

And that's been an incredible blessing to so many people. But just curious, just so people listening know, can you tell me what the average cost per person is for one of these weeks?

09:07

So, when people are giving, what does it look like? When we ask for scholarships, you know, a lot of our fundraising is based on a scholarship.

09:17

This is what it costs to get one person to the program. It's about $2 ,500 a person per week. And again, that's the program, that's the food, that's the travel, that's the staff that we have there, about $2 ,500 a week.

09:28

So, we round it, $2 ,500, but it's, you know, more or less, but that's about right. So, along those lines, one thing

09:35

I was just thinking is a lot of the guys I heard talk specifically with the DMT, they've said, and you mentioned this earlier, like when you're in, you don't talk about your weaknesses, right?

09:46

If you're struggling, you don't talk about that because, you know, it's not a good thing to show signs of weakness.

09:52

And so, they don't talk about stuff. And so, that's a big problem with a lot of these guys is they're like, we never talk about stuff, you know?

10:02

So, they're saying that DMT is like the, and I'm not asking you to speak on DMT, but like they say like that's the gateway that allows them to just like open up and talk about stuff.

10:14

So, I'm just curious, what do you guys do? Like, what method do you do? Where do you think is the most effective to get guys to like put down that wall and just be open and transparent?

10:24

Yeah, it's exactly what, you know, what I started with talking about our program. We have an environment.

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So, a student comes to our program, they're coming to a ranch, it's unfamiliar in a place, you know, probably not near their house with a bunch of people they don't know.

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So, the wall is definitely up. They're there for whatever reason they're there. Maybe their wife said, if you don't do this,

10:47

I'll walk out. Maybe they've been searching for something, whatever the case, they're there. And they sit, typically, they've got the sunglasses on, the hat down, they don't want to make eye contact, they don't know anyone else in the room, but they're convinced that we can't help them and they're the only ones who've ever experienced what they've experienced.

11:07

They're sitting in a room with 30 other guys and one of the first things we do is say, we're going to go around the room, stand up, introduce yourself, this is your name, where you served, one interesting thing about yourself if you want to.

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And so, you know, right at the beginning, we talk or we present like everyone here has a similar background to maybe not the same, we'll get there, but a similar background.

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Then the instructors begin sharing their stories. The most powerful thing we have as instructors in our program is our testimonies.

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So, we teach classes on character, we teach classes on discipline and purity and legacy and all these things throughout the week.

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But every class is taught from a testimonial standpoint. So, something like this, I was sitting where you are,

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I heard this class and it changed my life, here's why, this is my story. And as these transparent stories, stories of childhood sexual abuse, stories of, you know, marital strife and broken relationships, stories of drug and alcohol abuse.

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When these stories are shared and the solution is found in and then, you know, I came here and God worked in my life and I began to have begun to move forward.

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And when those stories are shared, the walls begin to come down because now you can see yourself in the person who's speaking.

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And then you're in this group of people who are very similar to you. They're going to call you out if you lie because they're going to know it. And there's nothing you can tell them that's going to surprise them.

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Then after a class is taught, every student, every person is broken into a team.

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So, they go out with their team of, you know, four or five other people. They have a facilitator who's also a graduate of our program who has military experience.

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All of our instructors on the men's side are combat veterans. And they're sitting in this group now breaking down this thing with other people very similar to them.

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You'd be amazed at how quickly these students open up because they're comfortable again.

13:07

Part of it is they're back in a familiar environment in a weird way around other military people. They kind of joke the same way and say the same stuff.

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And it's just a familiar environment, but it's a very transparent environment. And that transparency is led from the front, from the student or from the instructors, from those who are teaching.

13:24

And it's every single person. You don't teach in our program. You're not a part of our program if you're not willing to be very honest and very transparent.

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If we start on Monday, which most of our sessions do, then Thursday night or Thursday afternoon, we have testimony time.

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That's church word. But we explain to the guys, this is your opportunity to get up and tell your story.

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You have 20 minutes. You say anything you want. Don't do it at all. It's up to you. And man, the most powerful time of the week is sitting there for two or three hours listening to these guys tell their stories and saying things they've never said to anyone else, being very honest and very transparent.

14:05

And do you need DMT for that? You don't. You need to be in the right environment with people who are willing to be honest with you and transparent with you and give you the space to do the same.