First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Wess Stafford

The President of Compassion International, Wess Stafford, tells a very personal and painful story of childhood abuse and subsequent forgiveness, freeing him to be an advocate for children. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 16 Jun 2011
Audio Format:: other

The President of Compassion International, Wess Stafford, tells a very personal and painful story of childhood abuse and subsequent forgiveness, freeing him to be an advocate for children.

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

And so with clenched peeps in the same rage I had, I determined to forgive them. And I said to them, "You people, I know that you're not sorry. I know you never will apologize, so I choose to forgive you." This is First Person. Welcome to this week's program. I'm Wayne Shepherd. You're going to hear a powerful account today of a man whose own pain as a child has been channeled by God into a ministry that reaches worldwide. Wes Stafford, the president of Compassion International, will tell his story in a moment. If you've yet to visit our website, firstpersoninterview.com, I hope you will do so soon as there's always additional information about each of our guests and links you can follow. Again, we're found at firstpersoninterview.com and one feature you may enjoy is the audio archive of past programs. They're all online for listening anytime at firstpersoninterview.com. Wes Stafford has been working on a new book, which we hope to see in the months ahead, but his book, Too Small to Ignore, has had a tremendous impact not only in its advocacy for children who are victimized around the world, but also because it tells the story of a man who was raised in an African village, but also suffered mistreatment in a Christian boarding school. I ask Wes to tell his story. My folks are missionaries. By the way, I'm waiting on if you know this, but they were graduates of Moody Bible Institute. I was probably born with an a stern throw of Crow Hall. They were called to be missionaries and they were called to the Ivory Coast of West Africa. And I had the privilege of growing up in a little village in the Ivory Coast. Now I can look back and say, boy, that was God's hand because I grew up among the very poor that I now serve. In fact, I know what it is to be a child in poverty because that's who all my friends were. We had no electricity. It was blazing hot 120 degrees with a typical day. And I got to be raised in a village that had a saying. It takes the whole village to raise a child. And I was the wrong color, but I was one of the kids that got to be blessed by people with that mentality. So, you know, I never fell down and hurt myself without some African swooping in and picking me up, drying my eyes. Almost all of the values that I carry in my heart that I now use to lead compassion. I learned in that village about love and joy and hope and time and courage and strength. By the time I was 15 years old and came to the United States, half of my boyhood friends had died. And I thought, well, the world's like this, children die. And then I got to America and discovered there's plenty of food, there's plenty of medicine. They didn't need to die. I had friends who died of measles, for example. I can remember one span of time, one out of every four of my friends died in about two weeks. And I remember finally going to my father with a broken heart saying, "Daddy, when is it my turn? When do I die?" And my dad said, "Roll up your sleeve, Wes." And I rolled it up. He says, "See those scratches on your arm? Those are called vaccinations. You got that before you came here, so you wouldn't get these kind of diseases." And, you know, Wayne, I think I became a Compassionate President at that moment. At 8/6, with blurs, tears blurring my eyes, I said to him, "Daddy, that's not fair. Why don't all the children have scratches?" Well, that was the precursor to me being a part of Compassion, where we scratch hundreds of thousands of children's little arms saving their lives every year. So that was the place where I grew up. My father was a linguist. He translated scriptures. I taught Africans how to read their language from the time I was very small. And that was sort of the book. That was the best of times. Those were the worst of times. Those were the best of times. It was sorrow over poverty. But I was nestled in a village of love. Sadly, that wasn't what I could do all year long, because there was a mission policy that all of the missionary kids across West Africa all went to one place, a boarding school, where we were basically get out of the way so the gospel could go forth with the mindset. And that was a little tough. But the worst part of it was the people that they put in charge of us didn't want to be doing this. They weren't called to care for kids. They weren't trained to care for kids. They didn't want to care for kids. Nobody was holding them accountable for how they cared for kids. So there was about 50 of us little children in this boarding school, gone from our parents in that loving village for nine months out of each year. And being away from parents, of course, was tough enough. But the worst part of it was we were in a very cruel environment where that was just filled with terror and abuse. And there were beatings going on all the time. I can remember when I finally was old enough to do the math, I discovered I was being beaten 17 times in the world. For silly little stuff, I'm six years old, I left my socks under my bed, but I went off to the classroom. There was no reason for that. But these people were extremely angry at their love in life. And this all went on without anyone being reported, I guess. Well, none of it got reported and that was sort of the diabolical part of it. They didn't get reported because they warned us, if you tell your parents what happens here, that will trouble them and you will ruin their ministry and there will be Africans in hell because of you. The old guilt trip. Oh, it worked. We used our love for the Lord, our love for parents and our love for Africans to silence us for the evil that we were going through. It's amazing the amount of abuse that children will absorb to protect the people they love. And that's what I did and all of us did. You know, we wrote letters home every week, but we could never tell this. We didn't dare. First of all, they were screaming our letters and if you tried to put out an SOS, you were beaten all over again. So we were abused spiritually, scared to death of God. But there was a point where you actually started to tell your mother what was going on, right? Well, you know, this code of silence got broken by me, ultimately, which shut the school down. We had been in America for one year on furlough, going around to the visiting, supporting churches. On the way back, we were at the airport. A bunch of us missionary kids were going off on our own with escorts, but our parents were coming by ship later with supplies and such. And one of the worst things about this code, not only were they abusing us physically and spiritually, emotionally and sexually, and we had nobody with, you know, the very people that we should have been able to run to for help were the ones who were abusing us. They also wouldn't allow us to have pictures of our parents, which some, you know, some genius thought would make us fatter. My great problem was I was not sure, after nine months, that I would know who my parents were. And so for the first month at school, in the midst of the terror, I couldn't forget what they looked like, and by the ninth month, I was afraid I wouldn't recognize them. So I'm nine years old, and I take my mother's face in my hands, and I look intently at the inner eyes at the airport, and I, she finally says, "What are you doing with?" And I said, "Oh, Mommy, I just don't want to forget what you look like." Well, she burst into tears, I burst into tears, and I sensed a moment where I might be rescued. And in about 30 seconds, I blurted out, "Mom, please don't send me back. They hate me there. They beat me there." And I remember this look of horror on her face. Well, we had no choice but to climb on the plane. She had no idea this was going on. She had told everybody all year long, "Oh, the kids love school, they're fine." We climbed on the plane to head back. She would sit with the rest of the missionary kids who had maintained this code of silence, looked at me like a dead man walking. You are dead. Yeah. So, but true to form, in the month, I took my mom and dad to come by ship with no more than that news flash of horror. Sure enough, my mom had a nervous breakdown on the way to Africa. And when she got to Africa, she had to be turned around and sent right back. Those days, dad, stayed with all things. But she was sent back to America for, you know, for psychological help. Well, when word got up to the school, the West had talked, and sure enough, his parents' ministry was destroyed. There came a very powerful moment in my life where the house parent grabbed me up in front of the kids, threw me up on a folding chair. I said, "I want you to meet Satan's tool, kids. We told you not to tell." This guy West told his parents, "Look at him. There will be Africans in hell because I hit my wall. That was as far as I could go. He did one thing more diabolically. He grabbed a candle to a birthday candle. He carved it off so it could burn from both directions, a wicket each end, and lit it. And he says, "You think you can serve God and Satan? You want to watch what happened, boys and girls, when someone tries that?" And he lit that candle from both ends. And I had had enough. This was the most evil I could handle. I was not Satan's tool. I was just a little boy who would cry it out for help. You weren't backing down, were you? Well, it's hard to believe at this point, but I refused to back down. I said, "I am not dropping this candle. This time I can win. For the first time in my life, he's put me on a level playing field. It's always been him doing whatever. He wanted him beating me. I am not dropping. I don't care how much this hurts. I will not give him the joy of this victory." And by now I just turned 10. You can imagine the rage that was in a little boy to do that. I stood there. I watched those flames as he went on and on about how terrible I was. The flames looked closer to my fingers. I couldn't, after a while I couldn't hear them, all I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears. And I clenched every muscle in my body. And I watched my fingers, my thumb and my index finger turn red. I watched a bubble pop out from a blister and I watched smoke begin to curl up. And I said, "I'm not dropping. I cannot lose again. This was going to be in my mind. His Waterloo, but it was going to be my Masada. I don't retreat from here." That's the level of rage and hurt I had as a little boy. When finally one of the little kids couldn't stand it, jumped up and slapped it out of my hand. But everybody screamed and scattered and I stood on that chair all by myself. And Wayne, I had my calling in life at age 10. I said, "I know what happens when children don't have a champion, when children don't have a voice, and somehow I will spend my life protecting and fighting for children." Who knew that the loss of my little friends in the village from poverty and my resolve to fight for kids would lead me to Compassion International and ultimately to the presidency of Compassion International. And all I do with the same courage and the logic at the same level of rage, I champion children. I wrote too small to ignore was to give a voice to those who have no voice and it all came from my life by age 10. You can actually look at my life and you can date it BC before candle and AD after the destruction. And for those who are anxious for me right now, God redeemed that through forgiveness. I part on them. They never asked my forgiveness. I chose to forgive them so as not to carry them around hurting me the rest of my life. There is much more to West Stafford's story and we'll hear it coming up in the second half of today's first person. When you join us next week, a young man tells of his addiction to gambling. I haven't gambled in over ten years and every day it's a struggle and I'm thankful that God keeps it real in my life because I think of for one minute I thought, yeah, I could play poker here or I could go to the track and I could handle it this time. I would be in that same mess. It's another powerful story of redemption. You'll meet Rob Walgate next week right here on First Person. Let's continue our conversation with West Stafford, the president of Compassion International talking about his abuse as a child. He lived with this and carried this secret for decades. I didn't know how to speak about this, how do you explain that God allowed this to happen to you as a little boy? I used to wonder, you know, where did my prayers go? I used to scream for mercy into my pillow. Where did that go? Was I assigned the laziest guardian angel in all heaven and since I couldn't explain it in a way that would honor or explain the God I love, I chose to say nothing and I said nothing for 35 years but finally I did in my book but there was a pivotal moment when I got back to the United States at age 17 but at age 17 I was at a camp and I was a one man in one moment explained forgiveness and he said some of you have been deeply, deeply hurt. You have got people who have damaged your life and you've never forgiven them and it's not costing them anything. It's only costing you. You are carrying them around. You are letting them live rent free in your heart and it's not bothering them at all. You're the only one paying the price and there's only one way out of this and that is to forgive them and I thought to myself in the back row where I was, you know, I was a completely lost young teenager in America. I thought well what are you doing when they're not sorry and I sense God say well you forgive them anyway and so with clenched teeth in the same rage I had I determined to forgive them and I said to my, I said to them you people I know that you're not sorry. I know you never will apologize so I choose to forgive you. So you get out of my mind and you get out of my heart and you get out of my life. You stole my childhood. I'm not giving you the rest of my life. I choose to forgive you now get out it was it was the best I could do as a very damaged teenager. Can you imagine the turn your life would have taken if you'd not made that conscious decision. I would be in prison today. We're not going to go into all the details here but suffice it to say that at least some limited justice was eventually realized there but I'm more interested in how it affected you and how that propelled you to have the heart that you have to work primarily through compassion these days and do the things that you do. Yeah well justice took of course many many many years and it really didn't come about until I finally was willing to speak about it and those people were held accountable and you know I turned the page and they're gone but what I did was look forward and the loss of my little boyhood friends in the village had moved my heart toward the poor and the knowing what the abuse feels like and what it does to the spirit of a child propelled me to be a champion for children by the way Wayne both of those things speak a message into the heart of a child and it's an identical message poverty says the same thing that abuse says and the message is give up you don't matter nobody cares about you nobody's coming to your rescue that is the exact antithesis to the gospel the gospel is God knows you he loves you he nicked you in your mama's room he knows the hairs on your head and when I was able to forgive I stopped looking back and I looked forward and I said you know what I know about poverty I know that message that it breathes into a little child's heart so I will fight for these little children and I know that up that abuse says the same thing and somehow when I got to America I saw all the food and all of the all of the medicine and I realized my friends didn't need to die and I knew that somehow my life was going to have to bridge these two worlds and I realized Americans are sweet wonderful gentle spirited people who are the most generous people in the history of humanity and it isn't that they don't care it's that they don't know and when they do know they really really care and about the time all of this came together in my mind I stumble onto a place 34 years ago called Compassion International and all it does is bridge these two worlds it takes a little child in poverty and links them to somebody who cares who loves the Lord in Chicago and we serve as the bridge a two-way bridge by the way it's not everything that we have that they need it's what they have that we desperate absolutely like love and hope and joy and the power of prayer and faith oh my goodness when the poor and the those who got his blessed financially get together they need each other and so now I've been here 34 years Compassion has over a million of these links we have a million 200,000 little children each one and then now in 26 countries each one is linked to somebody in the United States or in Europe who are willing kind of like the good Samaritan was to say you know what you take care of this guy this little boy in the Philippines but I will pay the bill I can come up with 38 dollars I will be the one who pays the bill while you do the work on this little child and I bet you'd like to do a million more wouldn't you oh it just killed me if I was a millionaire it wouldn't last ten seconds but what you know the thing that's just warming my heart Compassion has doubled in size in the last four years and the reason Wayne is because the church is finally beginning to wake up and then realize that we can't live in this world of hurting people without doing something and now the question is so what can we do and what Compassion has offered all these years is well you may not be able to change everything but you could change everything for one child and so why don't you reach out and say I will be the good Samaritan for that child I'm gonna say to that child I'm looking at you I've got your picture on my refrigerator I pray for you every night I'm watching your progress I believe in you don't you dare give up and that's all we do I know you could tell us hundreds and thousands of stories but just tell us something that you've encountered recently that just reminds you of the mission of Compassion tell me personalize it for me would you us hmm I eventually began working in in Haiti with Compassion my first years were down there in Haiti among the poorest of the poor and I was one of those who who registered little children to be a part of this program and among those little ones that I rescued was a little boy from the island of Lagannov which is the poorest if Hades poor this is extreme poor and this little boy registered him in the in the program over the years I visited and he sat on my lap while the other children sang and this little boy got sponsored by a sponsor and he grew up and he grew up and he grew up in last week no two weeks I learned about it last week he happened two weeks ago he was elected senator in Haiti so a child from the absolute depths of poverty is now in a position of power to bless his nation oh yeah don't get me started yeah I know you can I know you're working on a new book can you give us a little hand of what's to call I'm doing this with booty publishers by the way you know I graduated from booty myself when when I came my turn to be old not to go to college I went to booty I was there from 7 from 67 to 70 I love the school the deal booty founded by can you sing the school I can sing the idea like that okay I do it very well in the shower look at the time it's slipping away here oh well you know it's been five years since I wrote too small to ignore and part of too small like more just a few pages of it made the case that when children are small the cement of their their soul is a lot like wet cement and it doesn't take much of an impression that can last a lifetime and it can be just done in a minute so the name of the book is just a minute and you might and what I've done is I've gathered many stories of famous people who had who can tell you the moment where their life got launched who said something did something put a star at the top of the paper gave them a hug that absolutely launched their life on the other hand at my candle moment that was 90 seconds by the way that candle burned but that was a moment that launched my life but it was a negative moment and you can destroy the life of a child in the span of just a just a minute and so what we're doing with booty publishers is I'm writing a book that tells the stories about standing people who can remember the pivotal moment of their life where they were seriously hurt and God redeemed it for good or somebody said the right thing at the right time and they have built their life off of it somebody said my but that was a kind thing to do and now you'd work in a charity of some kind or someone said my but you're smart and now you're a scientist all can come about from just a minute so the title of the sort of like how long does it take to transform a child's life well just a minute but that's what I'm writing west lots of joy lots of pain in your past any regrets no because I know that God has us in the palm of his hands you know I didn't talk about what I went through because all I saw was the back side of the tapestry I saw knots and tangles and what looked like mistakes and God neglecting me well as I wrote that book and I finally was able to talk about the story it was like turning the tapestry around and all the threads mattered and all of them formed a beautiful design and I was able to look and say you know what God was there all the time and when my guardian angel ran to him and said don't you hear his prayers don't you see his tears I can imagine that the Lord must have teared up and said yeah you know what I do I hear every strap of that belt I hear every tear I hear every prayer but he needs to do this he needs to know this because I've got a purpose for this young man to help bless the children of the world it's a perfect plan and one day I'll understand it and I do understand it today like praise God I and I know for anyone who is out there damaged God can redeem anything to his glory to me it's incredible that someone who suffered so much pain and abuse as a child should be called by God to turn around and spend his life helping children worldwide once again West Stafford is the president of Compassion International calling us to change the world one child at a time West says that now is the time to act on behalf of the world's children and invest in them because they are too small to ignore and by the way if you've not read this excellent book by Wes I strongly recommend it to you it's titled too small to ignore why children are the next big thing and we look forward to that new book coming from Wes as well but we've placed links and additional information about Compassion as well as the book that tells Wes's story on our website firstpersoninterview.com and if you feel led to sponsor a child through Compassion just follow the links found at firstpersoninterview.com first person is a weekly conversation heard at this time and if you're curious about past or future guests you'll find both an audio archive and a calendar online at firstpersoninterview.com next week we'll meet a young man who was an addictive gambler while still a teenager meet Rob Walgate on first person now with thanks to my friend and producer Joe Carlson I'm Wayne Shepard and we'll talk to you again next week on first person. 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