Followed By Mercy

The Front Lines of Grace: Fighting Child Trafficking and Veteran Suicide

• W. Austin Gardner

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What happens when a missionary kid becomes a Special Operations soldier—and then uses those skills to rescue children from the darkest places on earth?

In this powerful episode of Followed by Mercy, Austin Gardner is joined by long-time friend and mentee, Stephen Underwood. Stephen’s journey is nothing short of miraculous: from the mission fields of Peru to long-range surveillance in the Iraq War, and now to the helm of the Black Flag Innocence Foundation.

In this episode, Austin and Stephen discuss:

  • The Transition: How serving in the military prepared Stephen for a life-or-death ministry.
  • The Mission: The work of Black Flag International in executive protection and the high-stakes rescue of child sex trafficking victims.
  • Eternal vs. Temporal: Why saving a child from harm is only the first step—and why the Gospel is the ultimate rescue.
  • The Veteran’s Battle: A raw look at PTSD, the tragedy of veteran suicide, and why "adapting and overcoming" requires the grace of God.
  • Legacy and Family: Stephen’s story of marriage, fatherhood, and the "Tennessee Volunteer" spirit that drives his life.

This isn’t just an interview; it’s a call to action for every believer to realize that mercy isn’t passive—it’s a pursuit.

Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

Meet Stephen And Black Flag

Austin Gardner

I'm excited to be here today on Followed by Mercy, our podcast. And I am joined by a very good friend of mine named Stephen Underwood. And I really believe that what you're about to hear is going to change your life. And so thank you very much for being with me today. Stephen, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you and what we're going to be talking about.

Stephen Underwood

Well, I'm Stephen Underwood, as Brother Austin has already stated, and um served as a foreign missionary under his mentorship and guidance over the last decade from 2013 until 2024. Met him when I was only 14 years old. That's a long time ago. It was a long time ago. You can see the gray in my beard. I remember uh you did not have any white in your hair at the time. It was all brown.

Austin Gardner

That's right.

Stephen Underwood

But uh I was fortunate to to take a trip down to uh Peru where you were serving as a missionary and I saw the mission field and I knew that that's what I wanted to do with my life. And uh I got to live that dream for about a decade. I loved it, enjoyed it from the time that I was 15. That was my my goal and plan. But then I uh, like a lot of young guys, got a little sidetracked. I spent six years in the army. I did a tour in Iraq, served in a special operations unit called a Company H long range surveillance. And all of that, of course, the Lord was using to prepare me for what I believe was what I'm doing today, what I believe is what I'm doing today. And that's working with this a company called Black Flag International. It's a private security company. The private security company does a lot of what we call executive protection details. So high value clients, uh, high net worth clients, and things like that. But we also have a nonprofit arm, which is really what I believe God has prepared me for all through these years for this point in time in my life. And uh that is it's called Black Flag Innocence Foundation. And uh the goal, the focus, the mission is that we not only provide the surveillance and investigation, but we rescue victims of child sex trafficking. And uh once once uh they are safe, they're out of harm's way, uh the uh person that we've been investigating is in custody by local law enforcement. Then we connect them with resources to where they can not just be left in the wind, go back to the system that put them there in the first place, but connect them with resources to where they can heal, get the therapy that they need and to heal and go on to live halfway normal lives. And I say halfway normal because there's a trauma that will last that will exist for many, many years after something like that that sometimes will take a lifetime to heal from. But we want to put them in a place where they can begin that healing process. And because Black Flag Innocence Foundation is a is a faith-based organization, we know that that the ultimate goal is not simply to help them in this temporal life, but to help them to know that they have eternal life. And so that's one thing that uh that really helps me to be fully invested, to devote my time and energy into is that I know that the ultimate goal is not simply to rescue children from temporal harm, but to rescue them from the harm of eternal hell and see them one day in heaven.

Austin Gardner

I'm very excited that because we're gonna

Why Rescue Must Include Healing

Austin Gardner

spend a week or so with this interview of Stephen and other people about the Black Flag Initiative, and I hope that you will learn a lot about that. But Stephen, I kind of want to dig into who you are. So tell us about your life before the military.

Stephen Underwood

So uh I I joined the military at 19. So my life before the military was that of a typical teenager. Um, I was not a very good student. I had the capacity, I had the capabilities, but I was a little bit lazy. Um I thought I was the smartest guy in the room, and uh and so uh I was a little bit bored with school. I ended up skipping more classes than actually attending, and uh I just graduated by the skin of my teeth. But uh I I yes sir.

Austin Gardner

I will drive you home. Uh you know, I think let's talk a little bit about your dad. So I had a good So the kind of home you're raised in, at least I've heard your story. Right. I will I want our listeners to hear your story. You and your dad had something.

Stephen Underwood

We were we were very close. Um it was a strange relationship, at least for me looking back. Um, you know, he died in 2014. He was only 54 years old. He had a massive heart attack. But um my dad and I were very close. Uh he was my best friend, um, but we also butted heads a lot, and that's because I was so stubborn.

Austin Gardner

I don't I don't understand. I mean, I've never known you to be stubborn or obnoxious. I don't know.

Stephen Underwood

Um and and it's it's crazy how your mindset changes as you get older and you look back and you even remember things differently, just because even some of the fights that we had, it's like uh I can see what he was trying to do at that point, and it's like if I'd just listened.

Austin Gardner

Well now you have boys.

Speaker 1

And they're just as bad as I am.

Austin Gardner

Okay, let uh tell the people about a little bit about your family, and and your sons were all named kind of weirdly, and everybody ought to know that.

Stephen Underwood

So uh I was raised a an avid Tennessee Volunteers fan, and uh so I bleamed.

Austin Gardner

What's that what's that mean? Tennessee volunteers.

Stephen Underwood

The you know the military? No, no, no, no. That's uh well, they I guess you could call it that. They were the volunteers of the of the American Revolution that fought in the in in the mountains uh

Fatherhood Lessons From His Dad

Stephen Underwood

doing guerrilla warfare type tactics before that was even a thing. I'm just picking on you. Go ahead. But um, so of course, the greatest quarterback in all of history is Peyton Manning. He graduated from Tennessee.

Austin Gardner

Nobody would debate that, right?

Stephen Underwood

I don't think so. Well, some might say Tom Brady, but you know, he had to cheat to deflate the balls in order to So all right, folks.

Austin Gardner

This was about black flag initiative, not not uh not uh what was it, deflated footballs.

Stephen Underwood

Right, right. But uh so my oldest son, his name is Peyton, and uh, of course, Peyton has two brothers, and uh our middle son, his name is Eli. I understand Eli did not go to Tennessee, but he was still a Manning. And then uh our youngest son's name is Nealand, named after General Robert Nealand, one of the greatest football coaches in Tennessee history, and also the name of the stadium that they play in. Well, the third brother, he had he was apparently, this is the story I've heard, he was a better football player than both Peyton and Eli, but he had a disease that limited his playing ability that he found out that he had in college. But his name's Cooper, so Nealan's middle name in honor of him is Cooper.

Austin Gardner

Okay. All right. So I would ask who has the most influence in your life, but I'm getting a feeling it might be Tennessee football.

Stephen Underwood

They have a lot of influence in my life, but uh, you know, that relationship I had with my dad really helps me to think about decisions that I make today as an adult and as a dad. One thing that I remember about him is that he was an extremely hard worker. He worked more than he should. Uh, I don't remember taking family vacations ever. It wasn't until I was in the military and moved out of the house that they took my brother to Myrtle Beach for a family vacation. So I thought that was interesting. I was a little bit jealous about that.

Austin Gardner

I think I do I sense a sense of bitterness even today.

Stephen Underwood

A little bit. Ashley and I were talking about that just the other day, that, you know and I get it, in the nineties and things like that, everybody was working and the economy was good, so people were trying to take advantage of that. And so it wasn't it wasn't until I was gone to where he took the time to actually take a family vacation. Of course, I was out of the house. But uh that that does drive the decisions that we make as a family today that, you know, we are going to on purpose take time to spend with our our entire family. I just read this statistic last night, as a matter of fact, that the most vivid memories of an adult are the between the ages of five and ten when they take family vacations. And so, you know, my my boys have lived in three different countries already. They're all on their second passport. And so uh I think in their formative years that they have created quite a few memories. They're all fluent in Spanish, and uh to this day still talk over video games with their buddies in Argentina, and uh it's funny walking through the house and hearing them speaking Spanish while playing video games.

Austin Gardner

Well, before we move on and leave them, uh could we just tell real quickly how old they are?

Stephen Underwood

Yeah, so my oldest son is 17, he'll be 18 in November, and uh so he's he's coming up on a pretty big decision after high school. He still has one more year of high school, but I gave him the same option my dad gave me. You can either get a job, you can either go to college, or you can join the military. And so, uh, but you know, he said, I'm not gonna support you for the rest of your life. You're gonna learn to work and provide for yourself. That was a good decision. And I was, you know, I was I'm very grateful that that he was hard on me in that aspect because I, you know, I know what it I know what

Raising Boys With Purpose

Stephen Underwood

it means to live very humbly and uh just scrape by to be able to exist. But it's in those hard days that that you learn, you know, sometimes you have to sacrifice the things that you want to provide the things that you need.

Austin Gardner

Yep.

Stephen Underwood

All right, the other two kids? And then Eli is 12 and he'll be 13 in September. He's our rainbow baby. There's a five-year gap in between him and and Peyton. Ashley had a miscarriage in between, and so uh that was pretty tough on both of us. And uh I think there for a while she was extremely nervous about trying to have another child, and so we just waited on the Lord for that and took our time, so that's why there's a five-year gap. Okay, one more child. And then Nealand is our youngest, and of course he's the baby of the family. Uh, he can do no wrong. I will say this about Neiland. He is more like Ashley than the other two. He's got a calm, sweet demeanor about him, very awkward in social situations, but just has a heart of gold. And so uh all my boys have hearts of gold. They'll give you they'll sacrifice and give the shirt off their back for somebody that that's in need, which I'm very thankful for. I hope that they've seen that in my life, especially working in on the mission field and doing ministry, working with young people that didn't have families.

Austin Gardner

Well, maybe one of the more important people in your family we haven't really mentioned much. You've said her name two or three times. I see her picture behind you. Yeah. Let's tell let's tell everybody a little bit about Ashley and the relationship you have there.

Stephen Underwood

So Ashley is the most important person in our family. She's the rock. Outside of uh of Jesus saving my soul, she saved my life. I met her when I was home on leave from Iraq. We met for one night around Thanksgiving, because that's when I I took leave. And uh we met through a mutual friend. And uh he said, he told me, he's like, Hey man, we're gonna go on this double date, and I'm gonna be with this girl named Ashley, you're gonna be with her friend named Mindy. And uh five minutes into it, I realized that neither one of them thought it was a date. They just thought we were going to hang out and they were gonna get a free meal. But I realized that uh I really liked Ashley, and uh, since she didn't think that it was anything romantic, I decided to take advantage of that and and talk to her most of the evening. I immediately put her to the test because I wanted to see how high maintenance she was. She was too pretty, too gorgeous to not be high maintenance, but I realized that she was not at all. She can't she came from a very simple background, born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. But half for half of her childhood, she was raised by her grandparents on a farm in Appison. And so, uh, very simple. So as we were driving around, they were talking about where we were gonna go eat. And uh, of course, I had the money to say,

Ashley And A Warzone Love Story

Stephen Underwood

yeah, let's go to this nice steakhouse and really treat her. But instead, I said, Hey, there's a crystal, let's go through crystal. And she was content with a a sack full of crystals and uh and just happy as she could be. And so I said, you know what? There's something to this girl. She was not saved at the time. She was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, very religious, but she was lost. And so I went back to Iraq for 10 months. We didn't exchange phone numbers, email. At that time, MySpace was the only social media platform that existed. So we I I tried to find her on there, but I didn't know her last name. But I remembered where she told me she worked, and so the moment that I got relieved of active duty and after that deployment, after we did our post-deployment process, I got in my Jeep and drove straight to her workplace. I remember walking through the door and she saw me before I saw her. And uh, I just remember her running towards me, and uh she got to me and wrapped her arms around me. And two weeks later, we were together.

Austin Gardner

Amen.

Stephen Underwood

Been together for 18 years.

Austin Gardner

Well, praise the Lord. Okay, tell us about why you went in the military. How in the world did you you know decide to go in the military?

Stephen Underwood

Well, I was I did a six-month internship with you in Peru, and um and um I had committed to a year, but uh again, you know, in those character developing stages, I I lacked in that area of commitment and following through. And so uh came back to the to the U.S. and I decided that I would do what all my friends were doing and and go to college. Tried that for a while and uh really did not enjoy it. I didn't like didn't like somebody always telling me what to do and when to do it. And and so I joined the military where that's what's exactly what they do is tell you what to do and when to do it.

Austin Gardner

And you don't get out of that commitment.

Stephen Underwood

No, no. It's not a decision that you can say, you know, I don't feel like doing that today. And so I was pretty heavy growing up. Uh I I just say it, I was a fat kid growing up, and so I had to drop quite a bit of weight. But uh in that year between Peru and college, I dropped about a hundred pounds. And uh I was actually talking to a a Navy recruiter because I don't know, there was something interesting to me about the Navy, but then a friend of mine told me about Company H and long-range surveillance, and I thought that was very interesting and thought that that might be something that I could do. And so I went and talked to the recruiter there and uh ended up serving my entire time in that same unit, including that deployment in Iraq. And then we also did search and rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina down in uh Gulfport, Mississippi and New Orleans. And so uh I just had a I had a great time, but the army was exactly what I needed uh to to help me to to grow and mature in the character level of even when things are hard, you do it out of discipline. I still use that today. Motivation comes and goes. There's days that you feel like it, there's days that you don't feel like it, but when you have discipline in what you do, it doesn't matter how you feel you accomplish the mission.

Austin Gardner

I don't think the those of us that are non-military understand I think you're saying company H you only kind of company. Bring up bring us non-military people up to date.

Stephen Underwood

All right, so each unit has has a nomenclature, just like any piece of equipment in the military, and they're labeled in order to designate them within the military. And I I don't understand how they come up with all of that. I just know that I was a member of Company H, 120 First Longrange Surveillance Airborne Infantry. And so that's that was the unit that I served in. Break that down, break that down. I'll still all get it. So a unit would be roughly 120 soldiers broken up into we had five platoons that would be about 30 people, and a unit would

Army Discipline And Long Range Surveillance

Stephen Underwood

make up there would be about three or four units that would make up a battalion, and uh, a battalion would be there would be three or four battalions that would make up a regiment. And uh so it's just that chain of command, but it's it's broken up into to smaller segments. And so even within Company H, I was first platoon, and then within First Platoon, my uh first platoon, I was team six. And long range surveillance, we worked in six-man teams.

Austin Gardner

Wait a minute, what what is long-range surveillance?

Stephen Underwood

It would be reconnaissance, uh gathering intelligence. If there's any hunters that listen, it would be the same thing as if you set up a um a blind in the in the woods where you camouflage yourself into the terrain, and then you watch for your target, you gather that intelligence, report that intelligence back to the smart guys, the military intelligence, and then they would decide whether or not the intelligence was actionable if they wanted to pursue that target or if they felt like they had enough to where they could move on to the next. And um, so in Iraq, our mission, we worked along the Syrian border from the top of Turkey all the way down that Syrian border of Iraq, and we were responsible for capturing the terrorists and foreign fighters that were smuggling weapons and explosives from Syria into Iraq. And so there's there were a lot of villages that were along that um that border, and we primarily worked in the Sinjar mountain range, and they would use the Wadi systems, uh, which are big trenches basically, very deep, very wide, to smuggle those weapons, and they would embed themselves into the to the farmers and the sheep herders in that area, and that's how they would, you know, fight their their terroristic war in Iraq. And so we were responsible for capturing them, arresting them, and then turning them over to the Iraqi border police.

Austin Gardner

Okay, we're gonna get into a story that is going to rip your heart out uh of things that happened, and the reason the black flag initiative is important to Stephen is not that not just that he likes it, but I think people like you have needed somebody to care uh about hurting disabled veterans. Is that a fair statement? Oh absolutely, absolutely.

Stephen Underwood

I didn't expect this to happen. A little over a year ago, it's almost two years ago now, May will be two years, uh lost a very close friend to suicide. Uh Caleb Massey. And he uh he was in my platoon, he worked in a different team, but he uh committed suicide and uh went to his funeral and uh heard his story, heard about his struggles, and the sad reality is that I I had no idea he was even dealing with it. And uh disability comes in a lot of different forms. Of course, you have veterans that you know were in IEDs, they were in explosions, they were shot, they were wounded, and all of that. But the one that's often overlooked is post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, and that was something that he was dealing with. Caleb was one of those guys that you could always have fun with. He made light of everything. Even in hairy situations, he would make a joke and make you laugh. And uh so when I was at his funeral, there was something that clicked, and it just gave me uh a sense of urgency

PTSD Loss And A Call To Act

Stephen Underwood

to to try to serve those that served our country and help them fight the the battle that they don't talk about. It's one of those things that among most veterans is kind of taboo. We want to think that we are mentally strong and capable and can overcome any obstacle because that's our motto is adapt and overcome. But at some point, we've got to realize that you know we can't do everything on our own and our in our own power, and we've got to search out for that help. We've got to look for that help. And uh so hearing Caleb's story, he lived a very simple life as well. He loved being outdoors, and uh for a while he even lived in a tent down by the river just because he wanted to be outside. But uh one one of those told at Caleb's funeral was that he was in Augusta, Georgia, and he met this homeless guy, and uh without thinking about himself or his own needs, he gave him the keys to his car and said, Here, you may not have a place to live, but at least you got transportation.

Austin Gardner

Well, I cannot wait to hear more about his story and your story, and I I I want everybody to enjoy this. I want us to learn and grow, and so they will find information where.

Stephen Underwood

So if you go to Black Flag or excuse me, BFI dash innocence. Um dot com. That's the website for Black Flag Innocence Foundation or BlackFlag International.com. That will also link you to the foundation, but that's the uh private security website. And it's got a wealth of information on there. We've got statistics on child sex trafficking and how many victims actually exist. We really people are unaware of how prevalent trafficking is. We think that that happens overseas or in other countries, but it's right here in our backyard.

Austin Gardner

Okay. Well, we are going to break now, and uh we'll be back tomorrow with a lot more information. Fact is, in just a minute, uh well, tomorrow when this comes on for them, they will get to meet another hu a person. Could you tell them who that is?

Stephen Underwood

Yeah, so Alyssa Del Torre is uh gonna join us, and she was a former Miss USA winner. She now does conferences for women's empowerment and business management. And uh she's gonna join us and talk to us a little bit more about Black Flag Innocence Foundation. And she's uh a great, great lady,

Where To Learn More Next

Stephen Underwood

great source of information, and is really going to help us to understand more about what we do and why we do it. All right.

Austin Gardner

Well, I am looking forward to talking to you and again tomorrow. And God bless you. Thank you for being with us.

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Austin Gardner

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