One: Celebrating 50 Years of Compassion

by Wess K. Stafford

***COURTESY OF TWOBEARS BOOKS*** Growing up as a missionary kid in a West African village, I often cried myself to sleep to the sound of beating drums, drums that signaled that one of my little playmates had died. By the time I was 15 years old, half the children I had begun my childhood with were gone. Some to measles, some to smallpox, some to other illnesses. I had cried myself to sleep hundreds of nights. I thought the whole world was like that. I didn't know until I came to America that my friends had not needed to die. I was amazed at all the medicine that was available in America. I was appalled when I saw the grocery stores and all the food. And for a while I was angry because so many children were dying in poor nations and so few people in America seemed to care. But over time I realized the problem was not how few people cared but how few people even knew. I wish I could tell you that the drums no longer beat in that village. I wish I could report that poverty has been eradicated, that precious little children no longer die needlessly. But you know as well as I do that the world is even more unstable, more dangerous, more impoverished, and more in need of a Savior than it was during my own childhood. Compassion President Wess K. Stafford, PH.D.

158 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2002