Report from Richard & Linda Benskin with Joanna & Daniel

Dear Friends,

As many of you know from our email updates, the last week of March was a violent time in parts of Yendi. A long festering dispute about the paramount chieftaincy erupted. A number of people were killed in the fighting and finally, the existing Paramount Chief (YaaNaa) was killed. It is still hard to believe this has happened. Many were the times we visited with him at his palace. Our PHCW students unanimously petitioned to postpone the last few days of class, the clinic was almost deserted as well, and the situation was too distracting to get any work done on the handbook, so we left Yendi for a while until things settled down a bit. We were away from Yendi for about 2 weeks. Things are quite calm here now, though there is a greatly increased police and military presence to see that it stays that way. This traumatic event has, however, opened some new opportunities.

Bibles for the Peace Keepers

"When life gives you lemons - make lemonade" is a popular quote and, I believe, a sound concept. I can't think of a direct parallel in scripture, though some of the Proverbs may come close. The cross at Calvary itself shows God turning Satan's cruelest plans to the salvation of the world. Our latest small scale variation on this theme involves the "state of emergency" the government of Ghana has declared for the Yendi area. For this emergency, soldiers and national police from many parts of Ghana have been temporarily posted to Yendi to maintain the peace. These people tend to be very literate in English and eager for reading material for their off- duty time. While posted away from their homes their off-time is pretty open. We are happy to provide them with Bibles and study materials as long as our supplies last. Judging by the big smiles, they are also very happy to receive them. We believe great things will happen as these men and women begin to study and return to their homes and families across Ghana. Pray for God to bless their studies.

Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails. -Proverbs 19:21

How Your Prayers Are Being Answered

When we arrived in Yendi two and a half years ago, we did not know all the ways God would lead us to serve him. It quickly became clear one of the best ways to reach into the Muslim community was to show Christ's love through serving a group of patients that are often neglected - those with ugly skin ulcers, sores and other such wounds. Peter Bombande, the Ghanaian nurse at the clinic, was already doing this very capably, but he was also doing virtually all of the consulting of sick patients, and the workload was very heavy. Very soon after our arrival in Yendi, Peter and Linda began doing wound care as a team effort. At this point Linda does most of the wound care, but Peter often offers suggestions and takes over when she is gone.

We appreciate the many prayers you all lift up to the Father on behalf of our wound patients, and realized we seldom let you know how those prayers are being answered. Salifu Tea, the elderly "friend of YaaNaa" who was expected to die from his severe leg infection when we first saw him, has been completely well for a long time now and has often been seen riding his bicycle in Yendi. He evacuated to Tamale when YaaNaa was attacked and is doing well there. He is not yet willing to put on Christ, but he is eager to let us study with members of his family.

Alhassan, a laborer who came to us over two years ago expecting to have his leg amputated, is doing very well. The large open ulcer he has borne for close to thirty years is reduced to four tiny superficial wounds. This year he is finally healthy enough to farm. As the only Christian in his family, he rejoices openly at the healing God has given him.

Ali, the retired soldier/policeman who, with his wife, became a Christian shortly after we began caring for him, is also rejoicing that he is able to farm this year. His leg had a terrible infection that, according to our reference books, has no effective medical treatment short of skin grafts. But, our Lord smiled upon him and he also is well enough to farm this year. Pray his recovery continues.

Tani, the woman with the severely infected foot mentioned in our last newsletter, had cancer. We referred her to the Government Hospital in Yendi where she had her foot amputated. She was able to keep her knee joint, and seems to be gaining a far better state of general health than she had before. She is very happy. Please pray that the cancer had not spread.

We have found another rewarding area of service in teaching mothers how to better feed their children. There are a lot of superstitions here surrounding food, and breast-feeding in particular. It seems that whenever a baby wakes up crying, people think that there must be something wrong with the mother's milk (she doesn't have enough milk, it has no vitamins, or it has "spoiled"). These mothers will then often begin supplementing their very young babies' diets with un-enriched porridge. Naturally, malnutrition quickly follows. Often these families come to the clinic looking for baby formula. Less frequently a mother dies, leaving an orphaned newborn. In all of these situations, commercial infant formula is a poor solution (Ghana's health officials wisely prohibit such distribution). Infant mortality from infections is extremely high here, so babies especially need the antibodies found in human milk. And, of course, with no refrigeration and poor sanitation, the formula itself can become deadly. Linda and the staff at the clinic spend hours working with each mother, teaching, encouraging and helping her learn to feed her baby with confidence, using the magnificent system God has graciously provided. They also go to great lengths to encourage relatives to take on orphaned babies and "wet-nurse" them. The Lord has really blessed this ministry: invariably the mothers or surrogates are able to produce plenty of nourishing breastmilk and the babies thrive.

Primary Health Care Worker Training Update: Handbook Nears Completion

The fourteen students attending the March Primary Health Care Worker Course faced many difficulties, but they maintained a delightful Christian attitude throughout. They were warned before they came that we are still writing and testing the new handbook, so their textbook was a series of photocopied booklets, rather than one nicely bound book with an index. They showed enthusiasm at the prospect of offering suggestions for improving the final version, which should go to print in July, after a second similar test with a more educated group of students in Kumasi in June.

The teachers faced a few hardships, as well. The first two weeks of the course, Peter Bombande and Linda "tag-teamed" consulting at the busy clinic and lecturing to the PHCW students. In the evenings, Richard and Linda worked on the handbook for the next portion of the classes. Needless to say, we were all very grateful when Avril Keoughan came to teach some of the sessions. She is a Canadian nurse who worked in Kumasi a few years ago and is now setting up the new clinic at the Village of Hope children's home on the coast. We were also again able to get help from the extremely capable government Maternal-Child Health nurse, Margaret, so by the third week the teaching load was much more manageable. When it came time to teach emergency medicine, Richard enjoyed showing students how to improvise splints using common local items such as grass-bundle brooms.

Printing in this environment is always a problem. The erratic electric power and heavy dust tend to destroy equipment. Our solution has been to use an inexpensive (replaceable) printer with the ink-jets built into the disposable cartridges. But, a shipment of cartridges did not arrive when expected, so we were photocopying the booklets in town as they were completed. Frequently every copier in Yendi was "out of service." We really rejoiced when an emergency supply of cartridges arrived via airmail from the USA. At one point, the electricity was out most of the day when we needed to print an exam. The students were hopeful for a reprieve, but Richard hooked up our printer to the truck battery and the exam remained on schedule!

The book was not the only challenge to face this group of students. The final Monday of classes began with gunfire in the distance. Many of our students were young teenagers during the "Conflict" in 1994, when over 10,000 people in this area were killed, so the sound of gunfire is not something they can easily ignore. Background gunfire continued intermittently through the following day (Tuesday). That evening, the students came to our house as a group and begged to be dismissed. When it became clear that we could not continue with class as usual, we quickly made arrangements for them to complete the course at a later date. The students all left early Wednesday morning, joining the masses of high school students and families carrying their possessions as they left Yendi. We left Yendi that noon and worked on the handbook in the more peaceful environment of Gamoa-Fetteh, on the coast. All nine of the students from the Northern Region were able to return to Yendi in early May to complete their training. The Southerners will join the last part of the June course in Kumasi. The clinic offers micro-loans for graduates who are just a little short of the necessary funds to buy their initial supply of medicines, and with that help, several of these new graduates have already established health posts in their villages.

Prayer Requests and Future Plans

We are very excited about the upcoming Primary Health Care Worker Training class in Kumasi next month. Over half of the applicants are graduates or current students of Ghana Bible College in Kumasi. Some of them have been waiting years for us to hold a class during their school holidays. Most of these students will not set up health posts, but they will use their health training every day as they teach and preach. Some will teach a health lesson followed by a Bible lesson among people who are less open to Bible study alone. Others will supplement their family income with part-time health work. All of them will be better equipped to advise the many people who come to preachers when they are sick. They are all very enthusiastic about being a part of the final editing team for the new handbook.

Three of our co-workers are currently undergoing treatment for cancer or tumors. All are doing well. Please continue to pray for Jerry Thornton, who has completed his treatment for cancer. Hopefully his final check-up later this month will be favorable and he and his wife, Fran, will be able to return to Ghana in June or July. Fran is a very capable nurse, and she and Jerry teach and do follow-up on the PHCWs, combined with evangelism, especially in the Upper East. Also, please pray for Niipak Laar, who is no longer having seizures, but may still require brain surgery. He is an excellent evangelist who has worked with the clinic, but is now preparing for further training so he can preach full-time. His wife and children are active in the Yendi congregation, as well. Macy Kelly, the Californian nurse who has helped with the PHCW training and is still helping with the handbook via e-mail, has completed her chemotherapy and is about to begin radiation treatment for cancer. Pray that she will be healthy enough to come to Ghana to teach this winter. We also appreciate your continued prayers for our health, which continues to be good.

Obviously, we are anxious to bring the PHCW Handbook project to a close. We are grateful to the many authors of medically-oriented books who have encouraged us and given us permission to freely adapt content and illustrations from their works. Please pray that the final product is useful to the Christians promoting healthcare here in Ghana. We hope to have the final draft completed by mid-July.

Two summers ago we hosted our first "campaign" group. American Christians came to Yendi and blanketed the area with World Bible School applications. Many people signed up for the correspondence courses, and later their friends also signed up. At this point we have thousands of students in the Yendi area, some of whom have been studying for almost two years. They need personal attention, but many of them live in remote villages scattered all across the district. Happily, this is not a new problem. WBS has a system for dealing with all these students. We are expecting another group to come from our supporting congregation in Texas to hold a World Bible School follow-up campaign on July 20th. Students and their families will be invited to come to meet and study with WBS teachers and from the USA, local church members, and our local evangelists. These evangelists each have a section of the district they know intimately, so they will be able to tell students from even the most remote village where there is a congregation of the Lord's church meeting in their area.

The campaigners also expect to continue the work of dispersing WBS lessons and teaching the Gospel begun by the previous group. In fact, they are already "booked" to teach the Gospel at all 25 of the district's junior and senior high schools. Please especially pray for peace to prevail in Yendi. It is very peaceful now, thanks in part to the peace keeping forces. There are, however, still a number of underlying, unresolved issues.

Please pray that all impediments to peace in Yendi are removed so that the work on the book, work of the clinic, work of the evangelists, and the upcoming WBS follow-up campaign can all proceed smoothly.

In the Service of The King,
The Benskin Family