No Greater Love, by Levi Benkert and Candy Chand

At first, I didn't know whether to admire Levi Benkert or to think he was an idiot.  To be fair to me, I wasn't the only one who thought he was an idiot when he started talking about selling everything he owned, uprooting his family, and moving to Ethiopia.  But like his critics, I was humbled to read about Levi's experiences in No Greater Love: One Man's Radical Journey Through the Heart of Ethiopia.

The lovely Benkerts.  They had adopted one daughter in the US,
then adopted their youngest in Ethiopia.

Benkert, a California real estate developer hit hard by the real estate bust a few years ago, never imagined that he'd live in Ethiopia.  A pastor friend called and asked him to join a team going on a two-week visit to an Ethiopian orphanage.  The orphanage, in Jinka, a small, rural town in southern Ethiopia, two days' drive from the capital, started in response to some of the local clans' practice of mingi.  Tribal superstitions deemed that some children are born cursed, as a result of the parents not being married, of the parents not announcing that they were trying to conceive, or if the child's upper teeth came in before the lower teeth.  In order to keep the evil spirits away, the mingi children must be killed, either directly or by exposure and starvation.  (This story discusses the mingi tradition, and includes quotes from the Benkerts.)

After his two-week stay in Ethiopia, Benkert felt compelled to return and do all he could to save mingi children.  Six weeks after arriving back in California, his family, having sold all their worldly possessions, boarded a plane to Ethiopia.  No Greater Love tells the Benkert's story, and the story of the trials they faced in their work in Ethiopia.  Benkert is honest about the mistakes they made.  This is certainly not a "how to" manual for missionaries; they were naive and uninformed.  However, they learned some great lessons along the way about obedience and trusting God.

So after reading, I had to come down on the side of admiration.  Sure, he seemed like an idiot at times, but God sometimes calls us to do things that don't make sense.  No Greater Love is one of those books that should come with a warning label: "The authors are not responsible if you decide to do something truly crazy after reading this book!"  Surely God has something crazy that he needs me to do. . . .

You can follow the Benkert's ongoing ministry here: bringlove.in.  As they tell in the book, they transitioned out of the orphanage they originally worked with, and now, through Bring Love In, coordinate homes in which widows can care for orphans.



Thanks to Tyndale House for the complementary review copy!