Levi Benkert was a successful Sacramento businessman until 2009 when the economic downturn forced him to close his business. While his life in California was falling apart he was presented an opportunity to go to Ethiopia to rescue orphans. A tribe in the south of Ethiopia regards some children born under certain conditions as ‘mingi‘ or ‘cursed.’ These were children who are conceived without the parents announcing their intentions to the tribal elders or children who’s top teeth come in before their bottom teeth or any number of differences from what is considered ‘normal ‘ in that culture. The tribe lives in fear that if the mingi child remained in their midst they would bring on them ill will from evil spirits. So the traditional practice was to abandon them to die from exposure or starvation. However through the mediation of a local man named Simi and some German photographers (who were there short-term), the tribe agreed to allow Simi to remove the children from the tribal land instead of killing the kids.



Levi embarks on a two week mission where he sees these kids who were rescued, feels acutely the weight of the problem and is moved to do whatever he can to help. Shortly thereafter he returned to Jinka, Ethiopia with his wife and three kids to run an orphanage for the rescued children. They had sold all their belongings and lived off support that a church gave to them. As Levi tells his story, he in honest about where he and his family wrestled with culture shock, personal motives (was here to escape his business failures or to help?), mistakes he made, and the challenge of being both culturally sensitive and courageous in his stance against injustice. This is a Christian story, and so the themes of surrender and trust in God permeate Levi’s life in Ethiopia.

Without giving you all the details of Levi’s story ( read the book for yourself), the situation with the tribes in Southern Ethiopia has changed somewhat with the Ethiopian government taking a more active interest in managing orphans. Levi and his family now run another orphanage in Addis Ababa which places orphan children in homes with widow care takers (a creative way of fulfilling James 1:27).

Despite my enthusiasm about missions, I sometimes am wary of problems in various missionary organizations (i.e. ethnocentricity, paternalism, etc.). I also am suspicious of much of the international adoption agencies because of an array of injustices perpetuated by some organizations. On either score, I found little in Levi Benkert’s memoir to make me wary of his project. He and his wife decided to adopt one of the ‘mingi‘ children, and were involved with setting up adoptions for others but tried to do so in ways that respected Ethiopian culture but didn’t profiteer from the children or the system. They conducted their mission in Jinka and Addis Ababa with a high level of integrity. I was pretty impressed. That being said, I know nothing of their mission except what I have read in this book and have not researched the situation myself. A ‘Note to Reader’ at the end of the book gives the link to their ministry website bringlove.in for those who want to learn more. On a personal note, I find books like this where people take huge risks to do something good inspiring. You probably will too.

I received this blog from Tyndale Publishing House in exchange for this fair and balanced review. ( )

This book was readable but I found that as I progressed I was more and more amazed by the decisions that the author made; many of them seemed to me to be heart over head!

The author, his wife and their three young children were living in the US. They described themselves as Christians but were not attending church due to the "people who didn't do enough to help others and were way too self absorbed." The author seems to have been a successful businessman until the housing crisis when he lost everything. In the middle of the slump when investors were clamouring at his door, and he was basically about to declare bankruptcy, he received a call from a friend who begged him to travel to Ethiopia to help out a short term mission team in a children's orphanage. His wife told him to go so off he went....leaving a lot of angry people behind. Later he admitted he was running away from his problems....

In Africa he became emotionally involved with the orphanage kids who had been rescued due to a tribal practice of "mingi," which basically equates to murder to appease various evil spirits. He promised a local man that he would do everything he could including considering moving to Ethiopia to help rescue these and more children. He returned to America. Within six weeks, he had moved his entire family to Ethiopia permanently having secured church funding for their "mission." They took over the running of the orphanage.

Within a month the couple had fallen in love with one of the children and decided to adopt them. The adoption was processed but later fell through as it had not been processed properly so the child was returned to the orphanage (although later formally adopted.) The family spent all of their time trying to find adoptive homes for the children in their orphanage (both international and local adoptions.) But eventually they had to break the news to those that had been eagerly awaiting their adopted children that they could no longer go ahead with the adoptions as the tribal people would not release their children, despite having rejected them.

Having been through the roller-coaster of emotions involved in working with abandoned/street children I can easily see how someone can become this committed in such a short space of time. However, the family seem to be completely unaware of the culture they are living and working in and at first appear to disregard this aspect. They end up being forced out of their own organisation by local people who refuse them access to the orphanage children.

There is little evidence of God's leading, direction or help. the family do not appear to be trusting God and He is only briefly mentioned. I found this aspect particularly troubling as they were being 100% supported by churches....a round trip ticket for their whole family was $8000! They don't mention sharing the Gospel with any of the children or even attempting to and they make no concerted efforts to focus on learning the language. They allow themselves to be pushed from pillar to post by every new and often sick/injured child that enters their horizon and then they go all out to try and rescue that child regardless the consequence.....and with no planning/consideration for the long term.

The only saving grace was that at the end of the book the author takes time to reflect on what had happened and the decisions he has made and seems to experience a partial turning to God in helplessness. The website for the author's organisation also seems to have a better structure in terms of how they are now helping the children which I think must be down to the experiences of the author and learning from his mistakes. This was encouraging although there was still an absence of true saving faith on the website.

Sadly another case of Help without Hope....my extensive comments on this topic are here (http://christianmissionaryuk.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/help-without-hope-ultimate-tragedy.html)

This book reminded me of "Saving Levi," which I also read recently.

The book is free from bad language and sexual content, there is some violence and abuse of children that some readers may find disturbing. I wouldn't recommend this book. ( )