Conversations with Gary Black

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gary Black.

Hi Gary, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
In the early 1990s, I was working as a V.P. of Sales for a telecom company in downtown Denver, CO. I was fulfilled in my career and financially, but I had an empty feeling inside that I was not doing my “Call” in life. I received a call from a friend in Kansas City, MO and he asked if I wanted to stop everything I was doing, move my family to KC and start a faith-based nonprofit from scratch, I said “YES!”

So, at the age of 25 with two boys, with no money and no guarantees, we sold everything and moved to KC. My wife and I would clean abortion clinics and movie theaters at night with our two boys dragging along, and I would work the nonprofit during the day.

The moment we hit the ground, we started an internship for college-aged students and we started regional events in cities across America. We had killer worship bands, we would teach biblical stories, and we would empower young people to live their dreams with integrity and faith.

I was living my dream.

By 1999 we had grown into a small movement that culminated in the Washington D.C. mall with close to one million people in attendance.

Also in 1999, my first wife left me during one of our events, filed a false restraining order, took our now three boys, and disappeared. My closest friends and our Church knew she struggled with deep depression, bipolar issues, violence, etc. But I was left alone and I did not know how to help my wife. My pastor at the time looked at me one day in the middle of this tragedy and said, “Gary, we know you are innocent in all of this, but you are making us look bad, so we are going to blackball you moving forward.” I wasn’t sure what that meant at the time, but I was bankrupt and our nonprofit was shut down in less than three months.

My wife, my boys, and my dream job were all gone, on Christmas eve, 1999 I was driving my truck into a brick wall as I wanted to die, and my dad called me on my Motorola cell phone. “Son, go see a movie and stay alive, we will get through this.” So, I did. Not only did I stay alive, I decided to fight for my boys.

It took three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on attorneys, but I got full custody of my three sons (One of the first men to do so in Colorado) and met a woman that would change my life forever.

In the middle of fighting for my boys’ lives and making sure they were safe, I met a widow. Her husband had tragically died from an accident and left this 25-year-old mother of two all alone. She had been widowed for five years and was working at a nonprofit in the inner city of Colorado Springs. The moment I met her, I just knew. She brought me back to life and fell in love with my sons.

We married in late 2000, her two girls and my three boys. Later, in 2002, we would add our fourth son, Noah, to our little tribe. I had started a couple of companies and we were thriving in life; a beautiful home on five acres, sports, dance classes, and all the things. And something started to gnaw at me again, “Gary gets back to your call!”

During this time, I was helping one of my friends with his nonprofit working with orphans in Russia. We would get large corporations, Coke, Pepsi, Chic-fil-a, and others to sponsor orphanages. They would transform these kids’ lives by offering much better living conditions, education, families after they would get out of the orphanages, and real life.

My friend and I were in North Carolina meeting with the CEO of Pepsi-Cola bottling company to help us in Russia, and my cell phone rang. It was one of my mentors whom I had not heard from in some time. “Gary, what are you doing?” I told him, and he said, “I’m at a conference not far from you, come up, I want you to meet someone!” So, we did.

For the next few nights, four of us would gather around a table and dream. “How do we help the youth of America?” “How do we serve the most impoverished people on the planet?” “How do we create leaders in the next generation that will serve the poor and orphans of the world?”

So, in 2004, we started The World Race. We had no idea that it would catch on so quickly, but the millennial generation was ready. We sent thousands of young people around the globe; 11 countries in 11 months, serving our projects around the world. Anti-sex trafficking, orphans, water projects and so much more.

By 2006, I had sold everything again, packed up my family of eight, and moved to Swaziland, Africa. Every World Race team would start with us after a training camp in Africa, and we would send them around the world. It was amazing!

Our two oldest boys started playing rugby all over Africa, our girls started serving orphans and sex-trafficked girls, and our eleven-year-old played Cricket for an S. Africa team.

We thought we would be in Africa forever… the government had other plans… after a couple of years on the ground, we started getting pushback. The king of Swaziland, and his family (Now called the Kingdom of Eswatini), loved us and what we were doing with his country and its people, but the government didn’t like it.

I had started a radio show, joined a local tribe (Yes, I was initiated into a tribe in Africa), and my wife and daughters were empowering the locals in the “Children’s Villages” and the school systems. We were getting babies adopted, creating sustainable projects for the locals, and daily feeding and educating hundreds of “Double Orphans.”

We found ourselves on the front page of the newspaper and talk radio, and we received a letter from the government that we must leave Swazi forever. I sent my family back to CO and then followed them a couple of months later; As I was leaving the country and still at the airport, an ‘Official’ showed up and handed me a letter that we were never to come back again.

We have been back and plan to continue to go back for the rest of our lives!

Moving back to Colorado in 2008 from Africa was hard on us as a family. The reentry proved to be hard on all of us, especially our kids. The pace of life, the abundance of America, and entering back into a lifestyle that was so completely different than what we had experienced proved costly.

With six children, a rescission, and needing to provide emotionally and financially was challenging. I started a business, took odd jobs, and fought for my family. It wasn’t enough.

By 2012 one of our sons had lost himself in the drug and cartel culture of our city. He was running an underground rave network, and he was caught up in a very deadly lifestyle. At one point he had taken all of our belongings, his grandfather’s gun collection and he was headed out of the country. Our son was stopped on the highway by helicopters and state patrol, he was arrested and sent to prison. After a couple of fights, and bible studies in prison later, he called me four days in, “Dad, please come get me, I want to change my life!”

By 2013 he had his full-ride rugby scholarship reinstated, he was playing U.S.A. rugby again and was back at college. On a visit back home over Easter break 2013, he asked me to please not send him back to school. He said, “Dad, I don’t think I will leave if you send me back…” I sent him anyway.

By April 17th of that year, our son was gone. He got a B on a final in English and called me very excited on April 16th. And then, that night he sent me a text at 11:50. “Dad, I am sorry, I have to do this, I love you.”

He died right after midnight of a brutal and very violent suicide. (We still don’t know all that happened, but it didn’t matter, we lost our precious son.).

We were frozen, in shock, and unable to function. Our community hugely came around us, and some of my friends would meet me whenever I needed just to remind me to breathe. I lost a company we had just franchised in thirty-two states, we quit coaching for the World Race, and my wife and I needed a miracle to just survive.

By 2015, we had sold what we had, took our twelve-year-old son, and loaded a plan to Mijas, Spain. Back in 2004 when we were dreaming up the World Race, we also help start a leadership academy called G42. We started the first part in Africa, and then one of my mentors started the academy in Spain in 2008.

Moving to Spain and becoming more a part of g42 was the miracle we were looking for. We moved into a little white-washed village, Mijas Pueblo, Malaga Spain. We walked, bused, and trained everywhere, we sat on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea, and we rested for the first time in a very long time.

Soon we were teaching in the school, we started coaching and traveling for the World Race again, and we were doing what we were born to do, serving the next generation and serving the widow and orphans of the earth! It didn’t take the deep pain away of losing our son, but it did remind us of our “Why.”

By 2020, and after the world was shut down from a little pandemic called COVID, we found ourselves in transition again. The World Race lost millions of dollars, and our school in Spain was all but shut down, so we made our way back to Colorado. We did not know the enormity of what the pandemic was, so all of our stuff is still in Spain. We come back, not knowing that it would be a long-term move.

Now, we live near my eighty-three-year-old father, helping him raise three of our special-needs nephews and nieces, (My mom, sister, and brother have all passed in the last few years), and we started a new nonprofit called Mandate456. It’s around a bible verse Malachi 4:5-6 “He will turn the hearts of the children back to the parents, and the parent’s hearts back to the children.”

As I am writing this, we launched our discipleship App called JourneyMen today! https://jointhejourneymen.mn.co

The first part is to serve men of all ages, teaching them to live a life bigger than themselves and serve the A.O.W. (Alien, Orphan, and widow) of the earth. Our next App will be for women of all ages, “All the Sacred Things” my wife’s memoir with the same title will release in the next few weeks, and then we will add a marriage App.

And, so the journey continues…

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Loss of a son. Loss of marriage to mental illness and adultery. Loss of reputation, homes, businesses, and a couple of high-end nonprofits.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I start movements that change people’s lives. I am known for passion, leadership, loving God, and loving people, although I have not done that perfectly over the years 🙂 – I am proud of all the young people that are doing more than us and having the opportunity to serve their hearts as I/we grow older. I am very proud of my marriage, (My bride of twenty-two years is simply amazing, I am proud of my five children, and my four grandchildren!

My life’s motto is, “If you can be stopped, you will be!” I will not be stopped.

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Let me know what you guys need and if I can offer any support or coaching. You can post our new App, https://jointhejourneymen.mn.co, and our personal coaching page, garyandlisablack.com

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jointhejourneymen.mn.co
• Instagram: Gary D Black
• Facebook: Gary D Black
• Twitter: gary_dblack
• Youtube: garyandlisablack
• SoundCloud: garyandlisablack