Stephen, about five or six years old at the time, remembers waking to the thunderous sound of soldiers as they stormed through his village. There was no warning! They came like "thieves in the night" with guns and machetes, killing everyone in sight and then stealing the livestock and food. Many of the women and young girls were taken as slaves. The crops, not yet harvested, were torched and burned to the ground, along with the homes of the villagers and all the possessions within them.

Stephen became separated from his family in the darkness and mayhem, but somehow managed to escape into the bush unharmed. He remained there, hidden for most of the night, along with nine other young children. Each waited silently in the tall grass, praying they would be safe from the enemy. But the soldiers left no stone unturned that night. After destroying the village, they began marching through the bush looking for all survivors who might be hiding there.

Soon they stumbled upon ten young children, huddled together tightly. Among them was Stephen. After assembling the children together in a small group, the soldiers tied their wrists behind their backs and threw them into the open end of a large supply truck. As dawn made its way across the landscape, the children were driven to a distant field where a lone straw hut stood ominously in the distance. One by one, the soldiers escorted the children to the hut. "It was very far away," Stephen recalls. "We had to walk maybe a mile to reach it." Those who remained behind waited anxiously for the others to return, hoping to receive some sort of indication as to what they could expect when their turn came. However, what the young children didn't realize at the time was that the others who left before them would never return.

As Stephen recalls, he was the fifth or sixth child to be taken away. "I walked inside the hut," he says, "and noticed immediately that none of the others who went before me remained." Stephen then feared that perhaps the soldier standing in front of him had thrown them into the ground (meaning a mass grave). "He didn't wish to obtain any information from me," Stephen remembers. "He asked me only one question: 'Are you a Christian?' I said, 'Yes.'"

At that point, the soldier told Stephen to kneel before him on the ground. "But as I knelt there, something shiny caught my eye. I turned my head to see what it was just as the soldier attempted to cut my throat." This caused the soldier to miss his mark and cut through Stephen's ear instead, almost cutting it off. Blood went everywhere. "The pain was very bad. I was no longer inside my body. I was on the outside of myself. Suddenly I had strength that I was not capable of. I ran right through the wall of that straw hut!" Stephen didn't stop running for two days.

Several days later, aide workers from the ICRC spotted Stephen alone, running frantically through the African bush. Still in shock and traumatized by his encounter with the soldier, the aide workers had to chase him down and catch him like a wild animal. After stitching his ear and giving him some food and water, they took Stephen to join a group of boys on their way to Ethiopia. Together they walked to the distant country, knowing little about what to expect when they arrived, but praying they would be safe. At five or six years old, Stephen was on his own and must now learn to fend for himself.