“My name is Daniel Stephen Courney. The Lord saved me when I was a twelve-year-old boy. His grace was evident in my life as He moved me to study the Bible three hours a day and pray in the woods outside our cabin in upstate New York.
Upon my pastor’s suggestion, I attended Crown College of the Bible in Powell, TN, where I studied pastoral theology. I am also a veteran of the US Army, having volunteered during the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and served as a combat medic.
My wife is Anusha Courney. The Lord has blessed our union with six lovely children, in addition to 15 Nepali children that we have de facto adopted and who live in our home as part of our family. My wife and I have directed this children’s rescue mission for five years now.
Before the Army, I attended Crown College of the Bible in Powell, TN, and Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, TN, for four years total, studying pastoral theology.
I lived for eight years in Andhra Pradesh, India, and became proficient enough in the Telugu language to preach in it (my wife’s mother tongue), also learning how to read and write the Telugu script. యెహోవాను స్తుతించుడి (Praise the Lord!)
I moved to India in August of 2009 and soon after married Anusha, who is Indian.
As a church-planting cross-cultural evangelist and pastor, God has allowed me to start four churches that remain to this day. Serving as an evangelist and preaching in the streets of India, I have survived many attempts on my life and near-death experiences.
I contracted typhoid fever not long after moving to India, being reduced to 120 lbs, less weight than I was even right after graduating army basic combat training. I lived with my young wife in a slum, seeking to minister to the most needy of the people we could. We survived on only $400 a month for nearly three years, living without running water, reliable electricity, air conditioning, a vehicle, a toilet, a washer/dryer, internet, or TV – the way most people live in most of India.
Seven times in India, I experienced life-threatening persecution. In 2010, members of a terrorist organization called the Vishva Hindu Parishad (“World Hindu Council”) rammed into me while I was riding a bicycle with a truck. After knocking me to the ground, five terrorists jumped out of the vehicle and beat me unconscious with a tire iron to my face – in broad daylight.
After more than 15 minutes of being out cold, a police constable poured water on my face, reviving me, and I began to spit up copious amounts of blood. I had scars all over my body, and I suffer from knee pain and neurological/psychological problems to this day from that attack, which left me with a traumatic brain injury.
In 2013, I was attacked by Hindu priests after preaching Christ and against the folly of idolatry on the streets alone at night. I was repeatedly punched in the face until bloodied, then thrown to the ground and had my head repeatedly kicked, and my neck stomped. God used two men, strangers to me, to pull me up and pick up my scooter, encouraging me to flee as they held the bloodthirsty lynch mob at bay. Perhaps they were “ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation”!
In 2014, I was leading a team of local pastors and Christian leaders that I had been training in basic Christian theology and church-planting work. We found a very remote village that had a mountain overlooking it. Armed with a powerful amplifier, we climbed the hill, despite it being well over 100 degrees with high humidity. We did not preach against Hinduism but only preached Christ. One of the pastors began to vomit due to the intensity of the climb and climate. I sent him back down the hill to rest. I did not realize that an angry mob had formed at the base of the mountain! They took him and beat him, slamming his head against a brick wall. The Hindu priest came up the mountain threatening us. I was taken and had a hose wrapped around my neck and was beaten with a 2×4 piece of lumber to the back of my head while being repeatedly kicked and punched and dragged through the village. As the locals were threatening to castrate me and murder my family, one of the local native pastors convinced them that to murder a US citizen on Indian soil would not bode well for diplomacy between our nations.
A few months later in 2014, we were feeding about 30 homeless with hot meals at night when a crowd of Hindus on motorcycles encircled us. As I was preaching, I was grabbed. I tried to run but was held down by the large group of men. As they held me down, they took turns punching me in the face until bloody and kicking me below the belt. One man took my shirt and wrapped it as tightly as he could around my throat, and I felt my consciousness began to fade. I thought about my family and used all my strength to throw them off of me and run barefoot, after having lost my sandals. I was chased down again by the motorcycle gang, who beat me a second time, and then robbed me of my wallet and phone and dragged me to the police station. I then spent 16 hours there, where I was treated as a criminal but denied due process.
In 2015, as I was preaching, a member of the RSS, a Hindu crime syndicate, ordered me down off the car I was standing atop while preaching. When I got down, he began with others to punch me in the face. I took off running, as they were trying to capture me. They tried to grab our car key from my Indian brother, but he was able to overpower them. As I ran, they chased me on motorcycles. Several terrorists abducted me and threw me into a vehicle. As the vehicle was moving, I distracted my captors and jumped out of the moving vehicle (and did a combat roll, which I learned in airborne training, for good measure lol) and then ran, looking for Swaroop with our car. He intercepted me, opening the door, as our persecutors saw me and pursued on their motorcycles. I jumped into the car, and they rammed into it, leaving a large dent. We had a high-speed chase but managed to outrun them.
In early 2016, Swaroop and I were preaching in a remote village without any church. As we wrapped up, a gang formed and attacked us. They took a brick and completely smashed the rear glass of our car and tried to rob everything. I slammed on the accelerator, but they had phoned their friends who formed a roadblock with motorcycles about a mile down the road. I slowed down, feigning compliance, but then smashed the gas pedal and drove off-road into brush. We managed to escape.
In late 2016, I was preaching alone at night and handing out New Testaments in the Telugu language, as no other brothers were available to join me. I was dragged by my neck through the street, as a large mob from the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the Shiva Sena (“army of Shiva”), another terrorist cell, took turns beating me bloody. They demanded that I praise their God or be killed. I simply told them, in the Telugu language and English, that I am a disciple of Jesus and would not praise their devil god. For saying that, I was repeatedly punched in the face again. They dragged me by the amplifier neck strap through the street in front of a Hindu temple, where they tried to force me to kneel and receive the red dot (“tika”) on my forehead, as I thrashed about, trying to prevent it. Just then, the police arrived and dispersed the crowd. One of our church members just happened to drive by and see the riot and brought the police! Praise the Lord!
I was deported from India not long after that action. I also lead teams of street-preaching evangelists to Israel and have been on eight trips thus far. I was captured in Israel, put in iron shackles on my legs and handcuffs taken to an interrogation room, repeatedly punched in the head and kicked in the stomach while bound. I was nearly set on fire there, had many cigarettes put out on me, spit at in the face repeatedly, kicked and punched on many times by random Jews while preaching.
Even in America while on furlough for my mother’s health (I am her only child) while preaching on the streets, I was beaten with a billy club and left with a concussion, punched several times, jailed in three states (New York, New Jersey, and Oregon), and had the FBI raid our rented home. Thank you for your prayers!
We now live and serve in Nepal, where we have stayed for six years.I have personally baptized nearly 300 souls as a direct result of our open-air preaching, started four churches, have seen God raise people from the dead on two occasions, and praise God that my wife and I have been able to raise Nepali orphans and semi-orphans who come from extreme domestic abuse and neglect and who were at risk of being sex trafficked. We currently have 13 little Nepali girls and two Nepali boys living in our home as part of our family.
We are engaged in church planting here in Nepal and training local Nepali brothers to likewise be soldiers for Christ as elder-qualified church-planting evangelists who take the Gospel fearlessly to the streets of this demon-possessed land.
Thank you for your prayers!”
