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.

• 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)

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.

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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!

Popularity: 31% [?]

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.

• What are the first names of the children you sponsor, and what countries? Any special stories you like to tell about them? (Juli Jarvis)

1. Emmanuel (India)
2. Rene (Haiti)
3. Diego (Ecuador)
4. Laura (Bolivia)
5. Alba (Ecuador)
6. Mercedes (Ecuador)
7. Yolanda (Ecuador)
8. Veronica (Bolivia)
9. Sisay (Ethiopia)
10. Fatuma (Uganda)
11. Viola (Uganda)
12. Melecio (Bolivia)
13. Peter (Tanzania)
14. Eliana (Ecuador)
15. azmin (Ecuador)
16. Soinkan (Kenya)
17. 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.

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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!

Popularity: 28% [?]

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.

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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:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Parts etc.

• 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.

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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.

Popularity: 26% [?]

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 special. You get two.

Read the previous posts.

• If you didn’t work in the ministry field, what other career path would you have chosen? (Amy)

At one time I fully thought I was going to go into journalism. I have a master’s degree in international broadcasting, and I would have enjoyed going into journalism with a heart to do good - to have been a television anchor or a radio personality that honored heroes. The closest I ever come to using that part of my formal schooling is when I do the radio program, Speak Up With Compassion. But that’s about the only thing I can imagine myself doing.

I also could have happily gone back to the mission field where I grew up, but I guess that would be “work in the ministry field” so that won’t work for this question. It’s just hard for me to not think that way.

• What would you say is your “best blessing” that you have had or experienced with this ministry? (Chuck Guth)

I don’t even know where to begin. God has had his hand on Compassion’s ministry for 56 years and I’ve seen 31 of those years. I’ve been able to shepherd this organization for 15 of those years.

I’m overwhelmed by the blessings on the place. I rejoice that there are 4,500 churches across the world that have been able to be salt and light in the midst of really poverty-stricken communities. And I really get a kick out of the fact that we add two churches — with 200 or 300 children each — every day of the year. I get up in the morning and get a cup of coffee, light a fire in the fireplace, and I pray for those two churches wherever they are in the world. I think Lord, I don’t know where they are but let them get off to a good start. Let them be a blessing to their community.

My greatest joy is that this year over 150,000 of Compassion’s little children will accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. That doesn’t happen just because of Compassion … that happens because of the churches where these children are being blessed. It’s at the knee of their pastor or in the Sunday School class under the mango tree. That’s 477 children every day! (But who’s counting?)

The blessings are absolutely overwhelming. Maybe people don’t know this, but this is a 56-year-old organization that has doubled in size in the last four years. That’s amazing! This year’s budget is 54 million dollars bigger than last year’s budget, and that’s in this economy where “nothing” is going right. Amazing! God has chosen to bless us in spite of the circumstances in which we try to work.

Popularity: 22% [?]

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. If you want to catch up, here’s the background skinny.

• Do you have any personal goals or goals for the organization that you care to share? (Lisa Miles)

1. First, I want to see Compassion double in size in the next six years. Based on our recent growth, I believe it is pretty safe to predict that this organization will move from 1 million children to 2 million children in the course of the next six years.
2. Second, I want our Leadership Development Program, which I think is pure gold, to grow from our current count of 1,800 university students to 10,000 university students before I go. We already have that many qualified students, but we just need the money to put them through college.
3. Third, I want the alumni associations to expand. If we were to gather Compassion’s kids together, there would be standing room only in the biggest stadiums, and I can’t wait for the day when we actually do that! Everybody in the stadium would be a Compassion child or a Compassion graduate worshiping together. I would love to have that in place in the near future.
4. Fourth, I want to wisely choose my successor. We have great leaders in this ministry and when the time is right I want to get out of the way and let the next generation lead. I need God to orchestrate this and direct me to that person.
5. Lastly, I want to finish well. When my time serving Compassion is finally done, I want to walk out of here a man of God, overjoyed but humbled. I am deeply passionate about walking closely with my Lord in such a way that when the time comes I will leave this place “well.”

Popularity: 24% [?]

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. If you want to catch up, here’s the background skinny.

• What do you think is the largest challenge in eradicating poverty on the earth? (Allan)

The biggest challenge of eradicating poverty in the world isn’t finding enough money to throw at it. We often think that poverty is a lack of money. That’s a big piece of it, but it’s not the whole of it, or even the most critical part of it. If it was, I think we could probably organize our world to throw enough money at it to make it go away.

But poverty is much more complicated than that — it’s not about the kind of house that you live in or whether a sewer runs in front of your house. It’s not about the amount of calories you take in or the amount of money you have. Those are only the symptoms of poverty. That’s not real poverty. Real poverty is much more complicated than that and it doesn’t just happen overnight. It rolls down through the generations.

At Compassion we realize that the biggest challenge of poverty is a mindset — a lie that says to a child:

Look around you, nothing works, nothing is pretty nothing smells good — you don’t matter. Look at you. It’s all garbage and so are you. So give up. There’s nobody coming to your rescue. Nobody cares about you, just give up.

We must go into the midst of that abject poverty and breathe hope and love and life. We can meet the critical needs, but there’s no end of that. Scripture says, “So what does a man profit if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?”

What I think is the hardest thing is mobilizing God’s people around the world to not only send their money but to send their hearts and enter into the hurt of a little child and breathe hope:

Don’t give up. I’m watching you grow. I got your report card. I got your picture. I pray for you every night. I think you’re wonderful. Don’t give up.

If we could get enough people in the western world — this rich world that you talk about, Allan — to do that, we could absolutely end poverty on our planet. It’s not going to end with more effort. It’s not going to end with more money. It’s going to end with more heart.

Those of us who have been blessed have been blessed for one reason and one reason only, and that is to be a blessing. Anything God gives you beyond enough ought to be given away to lift someone else up to enough.

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