Another Man's War
Page 15
Patrick is a quiet boy of thirteen dressed in a bright yellow shirt. He speaks excellent English with a musical African lilt. He was ten when he was forced to serve the rebels. “We normally used a big stick to kill somebody,” he explains, his voice flat and without expression. “For fear you must kill. If you refuse you are going to be killed.” He watched his father murdered and saw his mother seriously wounded by knives. “Then,” he continues, “they say that we must kill our mother. Then they said if we refuse, they are going to kill us all. Then we do that. I was thinking, without my mother, how can I stay in the world?” He looks at the ground and silently wipes his eyes with his shirt.
Then the correspondent got around to me, the “Lone Ranger” and “gun-toting preacher.” Keith wanted to know whether I’d kill Joseph Kony if I had the chance. He kept trying to make me say, “Yes, I’d kill Kony,” but I didn’t say that. What I did say was that if I ran into Kony, “We’re gonna fight. And I’m gonna win. I’ve always liked to fight,” I added with a grin. “Still do. I’m a preacher, but I still like to fight.” Keith asked if I was a missionary or a mercenary. I said, “A lot of people call me a Christian mercenary. I will accept it either way.”
The report showed my soldiers and me joining hands and praying before we went out on a rescue. Dressed in full camo and carrying our AKs, we headed into the bush. I led the way in the Land Cruiser followed by our food truck, bristling with soldiers on this trip instead of beans and maize bread. The cameras revealed the grisly scenes of burned-out trucks and buildings along the way, including a school that had been attacked and torched by the LRA. Rebels had killed the teachers there, then cut one of them up and cooked her. Children who would eat her were let go; those who refused were shot in the head. The bodies of those who refused were stacked up in a pile. What the cameras failed to capture was the acrid, gag-producing stench and the electric fear that roiled around in the stifling air.
The segment closed with parting comments from Jan Egelund and Patrick.
Jan admitted sadly, “I have a deep sense of frustration because I feel that I’m failing. We are all failing.”
Patrick concluded with an observation familiar to all of us who have ever been there. “We as the children of northern Uganda, we’re so tired with that war.”
The segment was over, and the network cut to a commercial. I sat beside Lynn on the couch, frozen in place. We were afraid they’d made me sound too much like a mercenary, focusing on the guns and fighting rather than on my heart for the children. I’d been going to Africa seven years by then, and that was the first time I’d ever let anybody take a picture of me holding a gun. Who on earth would give money to some pistol-packing ex-biker dude who might be as crazy as the rebel leader he was after? Who’s going to believe in a gun-toting Good Samaritan?
Boy was I wrong.
The next day, so many people logged on to our Web site (boyerspond.com) that it crashed. Our e-mail accounts got so overstuffed they went down too. And just about every single message was positive. They weren’t complaining; they were congratulating us! Pastors wrote: “We want to thank you for what you’re doing.” “Thank God you have the guts to stand up and do what you do.” “I’d love to fight beside you in Africa, but I can’t, so keep up the good work.”
That show was the highest-profile coverage we’d ever had, and was one of many media accounts that raised our visibility to a whole new level. In time, Cornerstone TeleVision of Pittsburgh, TBN of Los Angeles, The 700 Club with Pat Robertson, the Mancow radio show in Chicago, and broadcasters in Uganda and Southern Sudan all picked up our story. I owe a huge debt of thanks to them.
Speaking invitations started pouring in from churches all over the country. We went from telling our story in country churches with fifty people to visiting huge congregations with two or three thousand people in the service. Within two weeks after the newsmagazine broadcast, I had received three hundred e-mails from people who wanted to talk to me about a documentary about the ministry or a feature film based on my life. Some of them probably had no clue how to make a movie, but some claimed connection with big-time Hollywood movers and shakers.
I had no interest in making a movie with any of these characters, so I threw every e-mail away. I had already agreed to work with this one lady who’d been in touch in the past and promised to give her a year to get a deal. Her idea was not actually a movie but a reality series. These were very hot at the time, and she wanted me as the subject for a reality-TV concept.
A few weeks after the broadcast, I was in Hollywood to attend a meeting set up by this agent-producer to talk about the TV show. The more I thought about the possibilities that might lie ahead due to the recent surge in national media exposure, the better my understanding was of the wealth of opportunities before us. But I still had several months to go on my existing obligation to the reality-show producer. As far as I could tell, we were getting nowhere with the reality concept. I might have just hung back and lived with it, but this was one of those times when life changed direction.
One day, after my commitment to the documentary agreement was over, I was back in my hotel room, and as I was looking through my briefcase, I stumbled across an e-mail from a producer in California. This was weird because it was one of the three hundred I had gotten right after the newsmagazine profile aired. I thought I’d thrown them all away. The producer’s name was Deborah Giarratana, and her office was only a short drive from where I was sitting at that moment.
I don’t know exactly why I did it, but I picked up the phone on impulse and called her number. What were the chances of a Hollywood producer being near the phone and taking a spur-of-the-moment call from a virtual stranger? A woman answered and I said, “Is Deborah there?”
“Yes, this is Deborah,” the voice said back.
“This is Sam Childers. You e-mailed me a few of months ago.”
“AAAiiiiieeeeeee!” The scream on the other end sounded like some sort of tribal yell. “No way! No way!” the voice shouted.
“Where are you?” Deborah asked.
“Well, I’m here in L.A. right now,” I said. “I was wondering if you’d have time to meet me while I’m here.”
“Yes,” she answered. “How about right now?”
I told her right now would be just fine.
She dropped everything to meet with me that afternoon. Her husband came with her, along with two other Hollywood folks. After we all were introduced, I explained that I had a commitment to this other agent and her reality show for several more months. I couldn’t talk about anything with Deborah until that time was up. We didn’t talk or e-mail again for six months. Seven months after our meeting in L.A. I called her. She immediately saw the potential for a movie about my work in Africa. But knowing it takes years to develop a film project, the first thing she did was connect me with the publisher Thomas Nelson in Nashville and negotiate a book contract.
Later she introduced me to important Hollywood celebrities, including one Academy Award–winning actor who eventually donated ten thousand dollars to fund one of our rescues. I got the chance to meet him at a fund-raiser for the orphanage. We were at an unbelievable mansion in the Hollywood Hills with huge rooms, incredible views, and a crush of beautiful people all around. Deborah grabbed me by the arm and brought me over for an introduction. He said hello with that unmistakable voice of his and was polite, though kind of standoffish. I guess he meets so many people who want something from him, he’s wary of everybody in the beginning.
Getting a movie made takes years from concept to finished film, so even if the movie does get made, I don’t know how long it will take. They tell me six to eight years is not unusual. The good news is that our project is now in active development and has attracted the interest of some high-level filmmakers. That in turn has sparked interest in a documentary film that’s gathering steam as well. As part of doing the research on them, I went back to some of my old haunts in Minnesota and took one of the screenwriters with me.
Pete Barsness was a guy I partied a lot with in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. He’s showing his age like the rest of us, sporting very long, grizzly mutton chops. My great friend Scott Wagner was there, along with his brother Bruce. I knew them both very well. These “Cohasset boys” used to hang around in Scott’s basement all the time and get high when we were young, say twelve to sixteen. His mother—we called her Ma Wagner—used to holler down the stairs, “What are you guys burning down there?!” And the boys would holler back, “Shut up, Mom!” That 70’s Show could have been written about the times we spent in that basement.
While driving through Grand Rapids with the writer a few months later working on our research, old memories came flooding back once again. Norm and a couple of guys had breakfast with me, and we talked about those long-ago times. When I think back about everything I did in this town, from fighting to guns to drugs, it’s a miracle I am still alive and never went to prison.
But what about all the people I messed up? All the lives I ruined? Norm said, “Well, maybe you had to screw up some people’s lives so you could save the ones you’re saving now.” All that sounded good, and it may have put a patch on my feelings, but I felt like crap. I began to think that revisiting the past like this was going to affect me mentally. I went to cemeteries and saw graves and tombstones of people I’d affected. They were just kids then. Jackie Evins’s tombstone was there, a heart-shaped pink granite monument sticking up out of the thick, quiet blanket of January snow. She was twenty-five when she died in a motorcycle wreck, years after I last saw her. She was one of three girls already at rest in that cemetery whose virginity I stole. Another girl there committed suicide because she thought her life was over because of her drug addiction. I had put the needle in her arm for the first time.
As I stood there in the cold, staring at their names carved in neat, level rows of letters on the stones, I felt like I had to apologize to them. I was raised in a Christian home, but I had allowed myself to turn away from God. I had given them something strong enough to possess them and destroy their lives. Yes, they made their own decisions later in life, but I started them out on the road to destruction.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered softly, looking down at the graves. “I’m so sorry.” I wished I could tell them that no matter what happened to them or how old they were, each one of them was a child of God, priceless and precious in his sight.
To tell my story for future generations, I had to revisit this heartbreaking part of my past. What had started with a call from a newsmagazine producer four years earlier led to national recognition for our ministry and increased support for our work. That journey forced me to relive these darkest chapters of my past in order to share them fully and accurately. It also led to many wonderful opportunities to tell the stories of the children of Southern Sudan. Those opportunities are still unfolding today, and I think one of them is especially wonderful because it involves something I love only slightly less than my family and my ministry: a great big motorcycle.
Over the past several years—since the time I sent my mortgage money to Africa—the Lord has showered so many blessings upon our ministry from a variety of people. There have also been donors who wanted to give something to me personally or give a gift to someone in my family. A couple of years ago, a very wealthy man went to Africa with me to see the operation there and think about what he might do to help us.
His offer really took me by surprise. He said, “Sam, I know your passion for riding and I want to do something for you. I want to buy your dream motorcycle for you. Custom-built, whatever you want.”
I laughed and said, “That’s an incredible offer, but I’ve already got my dream motorcycle. In fact, I’ve got two of them.” By then I had two fine Harleys in my garage, shining like new pennies and completely paid for. The being-paid-for part made them dream bikes even more. One was a Springer Classic and the other a Street Glide, both painted pearl black with drag pipes and lots of chrome. I couldn’t imagine anything better for me.
But my generous friend insisted. “No, Sam, I’m serious. I want to build a special, one-of-a-kind custom job just for you.”
I thought for a minute. “Can I do anything I want with it?”
“Sure. I don’t care what you do with it.”
I cracked a wide smile. “Okay,” I said. “I want to raffle it off for the children of Sudan.”
Now it was his turn to smile. “Done!” he said. “Who do you want to build it?”
There were a number of shops in the country that could do a pretty slick modification job on a bike for about fifty thousand dollars. That was not what I had in mind.
“Jesse James at West Coast Choppers in L.A.,” I told him. “They’re not an assembler or modifier of bikes. They custom build every piece from scratch. In the bike world, Jesse James is a legend.” I was going to be spending time in L.A. on the movie and these other projects, so I could be there to watch the bike take shape.
My friend never blinked an eye, even after I chose Jesse’s Diablo II design, which—at $145,000—is the most expensive bike he makes. The one change he made for me was to make the gas tank bigger and fatter, because I wanted to put a painting of some of the children I had rescued on the tank, and the original design didn’t have enough room.
Day by day, piece by piece, the bike took shape in the West Coast Chopper workshop under Jesse’s expert supervision. Though the sparks are flying, and the noise and banging are sometimes deafening, these people are true craftsmen who put art and feeling into everything they do. If you can’t think of a motorcycle as a work of art, you’ve never seen the Diablo II African Bike. The finished product is huge, a chopper with long front forks, extra-wide back wheel and tire, loaded with chrome, fenders and tank painted orange and black with gold and white outlining. Jesse’s trademark detail is putting .44 magnum shells stamped with his name here and there on each of his bikes. Since I often carry a .44 magnum in the bush, he added some extra ones to this job—on the riser, on the dipstick, on the wheels. Then there’s the painting—done from a photograph and just as real looking—of three Sudanese boys I had carried out of the bush myself, looking up at you as you ride.
Sam on the new “African Bike” custom-made by Jesse James
Jesse caught the vision for our orphanage and the idea of raffling off the bike, and decided to help us out even more. His wife is the movie star Sandra Bullock, and he told her what we were doing. Sandra autographed the bike, and for the first and only time ever, Jesse himself signed his own creation too. Peter Fonda added his signature along with a list of other stars. All these autographs bumped up the appraised value of the bike to $350,000. We’ve hit the road, carrying the bike in a special trailer painted to match, setting up at fairs, at churches, and on college campuses all across the country, selling raffle tickets for twenty dollars apiece. By the time you read this, some lucky winner will have this one-of-a-kind bike all to himself. Unless, that is, he decides to sell it to one of the celebrities who has already offered to pay the winner the appraised value for it.
As the blessings keep pouring
down, we continue to make even bigger plans for the future. But we still run up against many, trying challenges as we go, including fear, hardheadedness, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
TWELVE
an extra shot
As the newsmagazine, the African Bike, and rubbing shoulders with celebrities brought us more national recognition, a strange thing happened. Along with the donors who’d supported us faithfully over the years, we started attracting contributions from people who could afford to give away lots of money. The strange part about it was that some of these people who could make the most generous gifts were the most hesitant about giving. Donors who wrote those checks for fifty dollars or twenty dollars a month shared my passion for our ministry and gave even when it hurt. If they had a short month, they’d skimp on something else rather than cut their contribution when they knew the children were depending on it. That was a major contrast compared with some of the well-off people who were inspired at first by our story on the newsmagazine and CBN or heard it from their friends, who made big promises about financial assistance. Then they got cold feet.
Prospective donors with deep pockets came forward in the days and weeks after the profile aired and said they’d help us, then had second thoughts because of what I do—as if that weren’t blindingly obvious from the TV show. They sat there on their silk sofas in their million-dollar living rooms—people who had never faced anything more serious than getting a bad table at their favorite restaurant but had caught a glimpse of what our organization does—and told me they were afraid they might get in trouble by helping me raise money. I wanted to say, “Buddy, you don’t know what trouble is. Trouble is a platoon of LRA coming at you with machine guns spraying lead in every direction while you’re having a malaria attack. That’s trouble.”