LOS ANGELES -- Justin Wren stroked his prodigious beard, scratched the dry, red skin on his arm and squinted.
"It's kind of crazy we're here," he said. "All that green."
The ivy-covered coffee shop patio about two miles from the campus of UCLA brought Wren back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And, more specifically, the vision he had that led him to the African nation in the first place.
Four years ago, Wren was an MMA fighter struggling with addiction and depression, looking for something else of value in his life. During a spiritual retreat, he found it even if he didn't know where it was.