Measurable Outcomes
Why do we do the things we do? You and I.
Why bother getting that advanced degree? Just for the credentials?
Why eat the whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s ONE Cheesecake Brownie when 500 calories of poverty fighting creaminess would be good enough? Why buy the pint to begin with?
Continue Reading ›Wess Speaks (The Finale)
If you’re new here, our CEO, Wess Stafford, didn’t write this post, but he did answer the question. We recorded his answer and transcribed it for your reading pleasure.
- I remember you telling us how the idea of LDP came to you as you were taking a walk in your garden. I have always wondered what kind of trees were in the garden and what sounds were there? (Anthony Njoroge)
Continue Reading ›Wow — you have an amazing memory.
It was on the little ranch that I now own that I first had the thought of the Leadership Development Program (LDP). I didn’t even own the ranch then, I was just kind of walking through it. The trees I was walking through were Ponderosa Pines and the sounds that were all around me were squirrels chattering, cattle grazing and birds chirping. That was 11 years ago.
My great joy is out of that thought (that I’m sure was from God) we now have 1,800 LDP students. These are students who are going through university.
About two weeks ago I was in India for the country’s first LDP graduation down in Chennai, which used to be Madras. We graduated 16 that day, but there are 97 more university students in that program who will graduate in the next three or four years.
I go to the very first LDP graduation of each country. I can’t go to them all, but I’ve promised that I’ll be at the first one.
I met one of the young men in that LDP who is a medical student. Last year 205,000 of India’s sharpest and brightest took the medical entrance exams that the government puts out. That LDP medical student, whose father is a peasant farmer, placed second in the entire nation on the exam. That’s the kind of outstanding people we have in this program.
Yeah, okay some of them are still four and five years old and in the Child Sponsorship Program. Some of them are still in their momma’s womb. But when you think of the potential! What a loss the world would have if we didn’t give these kids the chance to, first of all reach their potential, but then also to reach that potential with a heart to give back. What would the world be like?
Do we still have cancer because the guy that was supposed to cure cancer grew up in a dump in Guatemala and didn’t make it? Or maybe he is running a sugarcane stand somewhere?
Every time I see these young people, especially when they are really, really small, I can’t help asking myself, What are they becoming? What has God knit into them in their momma’s womb? He knit their DNA. And what is His plan? What is His hope and future that He says He has for these little ones?
For the 1,800 that we’ve got in the Leadership Development Program, I’m thrilled to see that not only are they in the top of their classes, but they’re also the leaders on their campuses.
And I have no doubt that the young man I met is going to be a remarkable doctor. So I ask myself Who picked up his little child packet when there was a little four-year-old cute guy on the table? I bet they had no idea that God had orchestrated for this little guy to grow up to be a doctor, or a pastor, or president of the country.
So that’s where the idea of the LDP came from, walking through the Ponderosa Pines on my little ranch, and it was one of my absolute greatest joys.
Wess Speaks (Part XII)
If you’re new here, our CEO, Wess Stafford, didn’t write this post, but he did answer the question. We recorded his answer and transcribed it for your reading pleasure.
Read all the posts in the Wess Speaks series.
- Fire ants? (Kalaya G.)
I was nine. These were army ants, actually, and these things would come in streams of two or three inches wide … millions of them. As they went across the plains of Africa, everything feared them. They just migrated around. If they came to a rabbit hutch with rabbits in it, they could swarm on those rabbits, move on in a half hour, and all you would have left was bones. So we were scared to death of them.
You could see them for miles away. We would go out to meet them with fire on the end of sticks, and we would burn the leaders. They would hiss and spread out, and our hope was, when they regrouped, that they’d be angled in a different direction — not straight at our house.
We put insecticide powder all around the edge of the house to kill these things. But if they invaded your house, you had no choice but to get out. You couldn’t fight them. They would go through the house and eat anything made of meat — all the spiders, all of the lizards … everything would get eaten.
I slept in my little cot with the bedposts in #10 cans of kerosene so that the ants couldn’t come up and bite me. One night it was very, very hot and in my sleep I kicked my sheet off onto the floor. The ants crawled up the sheet and crawled onto me. I didn’t feel a thing until one of them went across my cheek.
In my sleep I reached up, thinking it was a mosquito, and slapped it. That put them all in a panic and they all bit at once. There were hundreds of these things — I was black with ants. I screamed and I ran to my folks.
These ants don’t just bite; they inject poison, so it was insanely painful. And the poison can kill you.
My folks had to pull them off of me one by one. Then I swelled up like a balloon. There was no time to get to the hospital, which was a day’s drive away, so all we could do is pray that I wouldn’t die.
I killed thousands of snakes as a kid. I lived among lions. But the ants were the scariest thing. So now I step on every ant I see.
To anyone who reads this blog, I need you to join me in this cause. Thank you for helping children in poverty, but my bigger cause is to step on ants! 😉
I will go all the way across the sidewalk to get one. It’s a new movement. I need thousands of people to join me in this battle. I will never get even with them!
Because of Compassion
See what our friend Eric “chappyphoto” Chapman has done. He created a Servant Life video from his trip to the Philippines. Actually, he did the sound and music. The rest was done under the keen direction of Taylor Robinson at Student Life.
Now, you can read about it and watch about it … uh … yeah. Watch about it.
Wess Speaks (Part XI)
If you’re new here, our CEO, Wess Stafford, didn’t write this post, but he did answer the question. We recorded his answer and transcribed it for your reading pleasure.
- What are the first names of the children you sponsor, and what countries? Any special stories you like to tell about them? (Juli Jarvis)
- Emmanuel (India)
- Rene (Haiti)
- Diego (Ecuador)
- Laura (Bolivia)
- Alba (Ecuador)
- Mercedes (Ecuador)
- Yolanda (Ecuador)
- Veronica (Bolivia)
- Sisay (Ethiopia)
- Fatuma (Uganda)
- Viola (Uganda)
- Melecio (Bolivia)
- Peter (Tanzania)
- Eliana (Ecuador)
- azmin (Ecuador)
- Soinkan (Kenya)
- Edithe (Burkina Faso)
I know these kids because if you come to our house, you’ll see a big poster next to our breakfast nook with these kids and their progressive pictures over the years. I have visited them all. These kids have been in our lives. About half of them have graduated from the program now, but they are still in my prayers. Some of them I am still in contact with.
Emmanuel now owns his own bicycle business. Rene is a pastor. Mercedes is an architect. Yolanda is the health worker in the Compassion project in Otavalo. Sisay just graduated from the program.
I would love to be a part of the Leadership Development Program. The minute one of our kids qualifies for the program, we’ll do that.
Wess Speaks (Part X)
Two more. Three to go.
Read all the posts in the Wess Speaks series.
- In Too Small to Ignore you shared much about your childhood. But I don’t remember reading anything about your first six years … what do you remember of your early childhood? (Vicki Small)
My very earliest memory is from when I was about five. I don’t know why our earliest memories are usually frightening ones, but I remember getting caught in a barbed wire fence when I was five years old. I still have the scar from that. I was totally trapped like an animal – the more I pulled, the more I tore myself apart. That’s my very earliest memory.
My second earliest memory is the S.S. United States – the ship that took us to Africa when I was five years old. It was on its second voyage. It had crossed, like the Titanic, from England to New York and we were on the return trip. The reason that memory is so emblazoned in my mind is because we went through a horrible storm. Turned out it was the worst storm that the captain of the ship had seen on the Atlantic in 30 years.
I remember looking at the waves way above the top of the ship. They would go down and the ship would just leap out of the water – the exposed propeller would rattle the whole ship. One minute we were going uphill because the ship was almost straight up, and the next minute we were running downhill.
My dad and the captain were the only two who didn’t get seasick. (My dad had just gotten out of the Navy.) But it was so bad that I remember one time at the dining room table, in one wave everything on the table slid right into my dad’s lap. We even strapped ourselves into our beds at night.
And for some reason (stupid little boy that I was!), I got outside and managed to climb up on the railing. I was hanging onto the railing as we were rising and falling in the storm. My mom came and grabbed me, otherwise, I could have gone overboard.
- Do you have any hobbies? (Amy)
My wife knows full well that she’s raised three children – two daughters and me. Because even though I’m all grown up now, 58 years old, I am still a child at heart. I still love to have fun. I am anything but a workaholic. I work really, really hard, but when I am not working, I am really not working.
So anything outdoors, I am all over it. I love to fish, especially in the ocean. I love to hunt. I love camping. I love hiking.
I don’t love golf. I used to caddy, and I know how to play golf, but I play it so poorly that all it does is make me mad.
I live on a little ranch with a lot of Ponderosa Pines, so I love clearing brush and chopping trees.
I play some sports. Every Friday that I’m in the office, I play racquetball with a bunch of guys.
I love riding a motorcycle. I would love to get a Harley someday, but I don’t have that kind of money. At least the motorcycle I do have – a Honda Magna 65 – has a big enough engine that nothing passes me up!
If you’re new here, these are transcribed answers from a conversation we recorded with our CEO, Wess Stafford.
Wess Speaks (Part IX)
Read all the posts in the Wess Speaks series.
- Have you been able to use your sign language as a ministry tool? (Sara Benson)
Wow … how do you even know that that’s one of the languages that I learned?
I learned sign language in San Angelo, TX. It was right after I had come out of the Defense Language Institute in Monterrey, CA, where I had been learning Czech to be a spy with the US Army. I saw sign language for the first time in a little Baptist church and I thought What a beautiful language.
I went up to the lady and said, “What are you doing?”
She said, “This is sign language.”
And I said, “Really?”
And she showed me [the signs for] Jesus and love and save – the gestures are so powerful. And this dear lady said to me, “You want to learn this?”
And I said, “I’m only here in San Angelo for three months.”
She said, “Every Sunday afternoon if you come to my house I will teach you this language.”
I fell in love with the language, and I got to the point where I could sign the hymns as we were singing, but I couldn’t ever get good enough to keep up with the preacher. The tragedy is that I haven’t done anything with it. I do now sit in church behind the sign language section because I just love to watch it. It is so expressive.
The beauty of sign language is that you can’t ignore the person you’re talking to when you’re doing sign language. You have to be eye to eye – personally engaged – because the gestures all matter. It is one of the most beautiful languages on earth.
I’m so chagrined that I fell in love with it, learned everything so quickly, and then haven’t had a chance to do anything with it.
If you’re new here, these are transcribed answers from a conversation we recorded with our CEO, Wess Stafford.
It’s About More Than Survival
Last month, I was reviewing the next newsletter that will be sent to people who support our Child Survival Program. I wasn’t too far into it when the tears started coming. Ok, so it isn’t completely unusual for me to cry while doing my every day work … I mean I do work at Compassion. But this time was different.
This time I could hear my son’s giggle, I could picture his face and I knew that if I had been born in one of Compassion’s ministry countries, most likely neither my son nor I would be alive today.
And Edison, my sweet Edison, who was born by c-section after hours of labor that went nowhere will probably be 15 pounds in a few weeks … an average weight for a four-month-old boy in the U.S.
- What would I have done alone in a ramshackle house with a dirt floor after hours of pushing and no baby?
- What would I do now without the multiple child health and development resources that I pour over weekly?
- What would I do without Jesus and the support of my local church community?
It’s a miracle that a small number of women and children in these circumstances actually survive. How can I not do everything I can possibly think of to tell others about what Compassion’s Child Survival Program is doing?
How can I not pray that this program can grow and grow and grow? So the children around the world growing up along with the amazing boy God has blessed me with will have the opportunity to reach their potential.
In a world with a growing global economy it is no longer about children and mothers who are far away, it’s about my next door neighbors … it’s about my own child.
And it is not just about survival it’s about women and children thriving so that they can change their own communities and countries and build a better world.
Wess Speaks (Part VIII)
By this time, you should know the drill. But if you’re new here, our Ask Wess post got the ball rolling, and it’s left the following in its wake:
- What advice would you give to a young director of a small starting ministry? (Gabe)
Make sure the cause of the ministry that you are leading is your absolute passion. Ask yourself deep in your soul
Is this really what I’m all about? Is this absolutely my passion?
The test that I put myself through every few days — and I would tell you to do the same — is this:
When you think about this ministry that you’re launching, test whether or not it can move you to tears in 30 seconds — either tears of great sorrow at the need that you are trying to fill or tears of great joy at the impact and the joy of making a difference in your world? If it cannot move you to tears in 30 second, my advice is … don’t do it.
Don’t start a ministry without huge passion. It’s got to come from deep inside you.
- What is the best thing that people going on a short term missions trip can do to make a lasting impact with the people that they serve? (Sara Benson)
First of all I would say, “Good for you!” for going on a mission trip. I think in this day and age, as small as the world has gotten and how easily we can travel to any corner of the world, anyone who can financially do it ought to get out there and see it. But my caution to you, Sara, is that you’re in for a surprise. Because you are going to be the one who’s impacted.
I know that it takes a wonderful heart to go out there — a heart to bless people and to make a lasting impact on them. But you are the one who’s really going to be changed.
What you should plan to do is to go to love, to serve and to learn, and you should go fully expecting to be blessed. God gave us two ears and one mouth, and I advise you to use them in that proportion. I know that’s especially true when you go overseas into a setting that you are not familiar with. You should do twice as much listening as talking.
Go with a heart to bless, but my experience has been — and I believe your reality will be — that you will come back with a heart far better blessed than you could ever imagine. Your biggest challenge isn’t what you do over there. Your biggest challenge will be determining afterward what you are going to do over here with what you now know and what you now feel. Scripture says “To whom much is given, much is required.” And that isn’t about money … that’s about experience and heart and insight. So I wouldn’t go over there without a realization that when I come back, I’m going to have to do something with what was done to my heart.
And one last thing I have to say is read Hope Lives – Amber Van Schooneveld’s book. I don’t know of a five-week personal journey that better prepares someone for a mission trip than that book.
How Can I Fight Poverty?
How can I help fight poverty? What in the world can I do? The problems are just so big, and I’m just so small. I want to be used by you, God, but I just don’t know what to do.
I’ve thought and prayed these things many times. When viewing this world with its huge statistics of dread that loom over us (one BILLION people living in poverty), have you ever just felt stuck? Paralyzed? Anaesthetized? Confused? Helpless? Hopeless?
I’ve felt all those things. Usually when I’m looking at two things:
- The enormous earth, jam-packed with dreadful statistics, and
- Me
They both seem like depressing prospects.
Thank God this is not about me or you. Thank God for His grace. When the Lord called out looking for someone to be his messenger, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8, NIV), He didn’t say “Whom shall I send who has a doctorate degree? Who will go for us who’s a super-swell, smart, sophisticated, experienced guy?”
No, God doesn’t put the same prerequisites on his servants that we put on ourselves. He seems quite eager to use each one of us as his servants, just the way he made us.
I recently wrote a book about responding to poverty, Hope Lives, and between you and me, this is a bit crazy. Don’t tell anyone (especially my marketers), but I’m just a goofball from Colorado who loves donuts and reality television. But I’m a goofball who (quite audaciously) called out to God, “Here am I, send me!”
And you know what? God (quite audaciously, in my opinion), said “OK.” I’m tempted to think He might need a stricter HR department, but those are just the lies of the enemy. God wants to use each one of us (I mean you) to reach out and help His hurting world, no matter how insufficient we think we are.
We might not all be missionaries or nurses or have doctorate degrees in poverty, but God did plant a little seed, a little talent, in each of us that He wants to use and grow. There’s a guy who works here at Compassion whom God gave the talent of rapping. Yes, rapping. And he’s using it to speak out against poverty. There’s a woman who loves to write letters, and she’s using this gift to write letters of encouragement and hope to dozens of children in poverty.
Maybe you can’t write or rap, but what can you do to serve others? Bake? Fix cars? Persuade? Sew? Tap Dance?
No matter how small (or random) our talent seems, God can use it. He can multiply our offering that seems so measly and make it into something incredible, just like the little boy with the two bitty fish that God used to feed 5,000 (John 6). God gave me the gift of writing.
The small step of faith I took in this has now been multiplied by God, through Hope Lives church kits which guide churches through a five-week journey of exploring how God wants us to respond to poverty. Now how crazy is that?
I believe God is waiting for each one of us to look past the looming, seemingly impossible statistics, forget ourselves and our own insufficiencies, and simply say: “Here I am God, send me.” And I bet we’ll be flat-out flabbergasted by what he does.
Wess Speaks (Part VII)
We recently gave you the opportunity ask our president, Wess, any questions you like. We’re publishing his transcribed answers one day at a time. Well, today is like yesterday; it’s special. You get two answers.
Read all the posts in the series.
- I noticed you hold a doctorate. I haven’t heard much about that — what did you get it in, and why? Does it help you at Compassion? (Chuck)
My doctorate is from Michigan State University and it is in non-formal education. That is how the poor learn … not in the classroom, not getting credentials, but through practical, functional, hands-on learning. I determined after my time in Haiti that I was not going to work among the poor until I formally studied how the poor learn: How do they take in new information? How do they adapt innovations? How do they change behavior?
My advice is: Don’t get a doctorate just for the credentials. If you’re going to get a doctorate, or even a master’s degree, you ought to ask yourself What is it that am I really passionate about learning in order to use it to change the world? A degree is just icing on the cake. Do not do it for the building up of credentials, as many, many people do.
I am Dr. Stafford, but everybody at Compassion calls me “Wess.” All across Asia I’m “Papa Wess,” which I love. (I think that’s better even than Dr. Wess.) The reason I rarely use my title is, first of all, I didn’t get it for that kind of credentialing reason. But also, I’ve discovered that being introduced as “Doctor so-and-so” builds walls, not bridges.
I use my credentials (being “Dr. Stafford”) if I am dealing with a developing nation and need to get into their department of education or to the president of the country. Wherever I need the title to advance the cause of Compassion, I use it. But I don’t use it around here. I don’t use it among our staff, because my experience is that it doesn’t add anything.
Use the information that that degree gives you, but don’t carry the degree around as some badge.
- What type of master’s program would you recommend for those who want to impact poverty and children in poverty? (Ian Durias)
Whatever your bachelor’s degree was in, if that has gripped your heart, pursue that. Working among the poor now requires all skill sets.
My master’s degree turned out to serve me quite well because it was in communications — it was in broadcasting. Almost anything you do among the poor is either speaking to the poor, which requires a lot of cross-cultural sensitivity, or speaking on behalf of the poor, which requires a lot of communication skills. You can’t miss in education, and I don’t think you can miss in communication.
But if God gifted you in math, study math. Get really, really good at it because as the world gets more and more complex, and the ability to travel gets easier and easier, every skill set, I think, is needed out there to help the poor. Don’t feel like you have to get a degree in social science or early childhood development to be relevant to the poor — you don’t.
Go for the learning and take the degree as icing on the cake. And then don’t use it as a club, use it as a bridge.
