Testimony 06- Charles Wafer

Message to the World: I pray everyone gets to know God. The devil comes to devour but God’s light overcomes darkness.

I grew up in Corsicana County, TX where I remember being with my grandma and my mother, who had me at 18. My grandmother spoiled me and always took me to church. My mom getting baptized shocked me because I knew she felt jealous of the relationship between my grandmother and me. My mother had been adopted by my grandma, which fed her insecurity about the relationship between my grandmother and I, because “he’s the baby now.” When I was 5, my sister was 3, and my mom was pregnant, we became homeless. I had sisters and brothers who would get beatings and that was only a piece of our family problems. When you see abuse it's painful. Our mom had boyfriends who took our food and I remember being hungry.

Prejudice in the 80s affected my life in many ways, and I didn’t go to school until I was about 5 or 6. We eventually found a home, I was in school, and we were going through life with our family problems when CPS asked to speak with me one day during class. There had been reports made about the abuse and CPS wanted to speak to the oldest, which was me, and they asked me to be honest and said, “Don’t you want your siblings to be safe?” I was 9 years old when I entered the Dallas foster care system. At first it wasn’t so bad because the case worker placed us with a nice black couple and my sisters lived nearby in the neighborhood. 

Prejudice made it so that we became separated as siblings, even though I wanted us to stay together. My case worker moved me from the couple's house and into a boys and girls house closer to some of my siblings but we ended up being placed all over the state. I was moved to San Antonio and experienced five group homes. I stayed at group homes until I was 19 and by then all my siblings had been adopted except for me. They don’t adopt the older ones. I thought it was all my fault for telling CPS I ‘wanted my siblings to be safe.’ Trauma and anger towards our mother took my sister's life, and I thought it was my fault. 

I graduated from high school in 1999, in San Antonio. No one came by to my graduation, but God came by.

My grandmother was 99 years old when she came and got me from the home and I saw my mom again that year. I began to see my mom more often as an adult, as well as get into altercations with her boyfriends and arguments with my mother over words that should have never been said. The thought that life events were my fault led me to say things I regretted. My mother died this year, 2025, but I had forgiven her by then. 

Before I was removed by CPS, I remember our mother never wanted us going to elementary or middle school and we were always on the move from place to place, but I wanted to learn. There were times when people didn’t like my color, and my mother and grandmother grew up in a time of severe prejudice and slavery, but racism was not in me. I didn’t want to hate. I knew I wanted to be something. I didn’t know what God wanted it to be, and I joined CUB Church at 25 years old in 2005. I began to experience God and at first I was angry due to my past, but Jesus came down to experience life as a human and I learned that it was meant for the son of man to die for our sins.

I learned about Noah and the ark, how everyone thought his faith was crazy, and then Jonah who was running from his calling and the whale God sent to him, and Job, who lost everything but gained it in seven-fold! Like Job and Jonah, I felt I was running from what God was calling me to and I was stuck in the belly of the whale. I wanted God to answer me when I wanted Him to, but He will answer when He answers. I saw something about spiritual gifts. Mine are discernment and faith. I used to watch my grandmother cry in church for her family to turn towards God, and I wondered why she cried. I cry too now. She is the reason who I am today. 

Life is not perfect – I struggled as an adult with drinking and drugs, the jailhouse now and then, and my kids, but I am going forward. My sister who lost her life to the trauma never went forward, she went back. I look back sometimes at the things that should not have happened, but God is teaching me now to have patience. God is doing things in my life. We are made in His image, He is in me, but I can’t do what God can do. I had crutches after a surgery from a football injury, and someone told me to toss them aside and from then on, I knew Jesus was real, because I walked. If God can heal the lame and the sick, He can heal me too. 

Being homeless doesn’t mean I always want money, sometimes clothes or food but really, I want someone to talk with about God. We are all the same – homeless or not homeless. They see with their eyes, but they don’t know me or my story. I am invisible. People in general will help you but not like God will help you. I think He will fully heal me from my pain one day. I have faith and I will keep asking.