ABC’s new summer series “Expedition Impossible,” which premieres June 23,

ABC’s new summer series “Expedition Impossible,” which premieres June 23, will include LDS competitors: Nicholas Coughlin, an Internet marketer from Clinton, Miss.; and his cousin, Jason Cronin, a business owner in Pensacola Beach, Fla.

On the show, 13 teams of three members will compete in 10 different phases of competition taking contenders across deserts, through rivers and over mountains in Morocco.

Coughlin said his sister practically forced him into the car to go to an open casting call for a different show, “The Apprentice,” last year. He came close but ended up being cut from that reality series.

“It was a bummer to say the least,” he said.

Then he got a call in November from a casting director.

He was told this new show would be right up his alley. He pitched the idea to Cronin, and it didn’t take much to convince him.

“Heck, yeah,” Cronin said. “I’m always up for an adventure. I needed a month away.”

Cronin is not only adventurous, he’s already a survivor. He has survived cancer, West Nile virus and has had Crohn’s disease, an often painful disorder that causes inflammation in the digestive tract.

For the third team member, Coughlin called his best friend, Chad Robinson, who considers himself a Christian and hails from Bolton, Miss.

“I was half asleep and I think that’s kind of how he got me to agree to it,” Robinson said, laughing. He said his response was something along the lines of, “Whatever, man, all right.” He simply trusted his lifelong friend and went for it.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into,” he said.

It seems none of them did. Coughlin described their challenges with crossing the Sahara, climbing in the Atlas Mountains, swimming through rivers and riding camels. For example, the challenges were often to travel from point A to point B, except they were supposed to go over the mountain for a checkpoint instead of around.

Mark Burnett, the creator of “Survivor,” is the show's producer. It has been described as an “Indiana Jones”-type adventure and compared to the likes of “The Amazing Race.”