Mennonite Mission Network – A 30-year-old dream is unfolding on a 12-acre plot in the West African country of Benin. Chickens scratching in the red soil and rows of tiny seedlings herald hope and bear witness to God’s power through the worldwide body of Christ working together.
With the arrival of Dominique Houngnon four months ago, Benin Bible Institute launched an agro-pastoral project that responds to a request presented to North American Mennonites in 1984 when a Beninese council of churches asked for collaboration in three areas – biblical training, health and agriculture.
Three years later, Mennonite Board of Missions, a predecessor agency of Mennonite Mission Network, began sending personnel to work alongside Beninese Christians. In addition to building deep relationships, this partnership bore fruit in the establishment of Bethesda Health Care Center in 1990, a community development project in 1993, and Benin Bible Institute in 1994.
Though the need for an agricultural project never disappeared, and steps toward its realization continued to be implemented, the project remained in the visionary realm until farm manager, Dominique Houngnon, took up residence in July, bringing life to the land that Benin Bible Institute purchased more than a decade ago. Prior to this assignment, Houngnon was a student, then an employee, of Benin Bible Institute.
The Bible school has trained more than 1,000 leaders who give spiritual guidance to churches and institutions throughout the country. Though some of the graduates act as agents of transformation in government offices and nongovernmental projects, many serve sacrificially in rural congregations that are not able to support a pastoral family. Benin’s annual gross national income per capita was $780 US in 2010 according to IndexMundi statistics that rank Benin 161 out of 190 countries.
The hope that a bivocational education, leadership training combined with agricultural skills, will help nourish the families of pastors is one of the reasons that Benin Bible Institute is investing in the agro-pastoral project, said director Bonaventure Akowanou.
Akowanou also believes that pastors will be able to introduce more efficient and innovative methods of crop management and animal husbandry to improve the quality of life in the villages where they minister, thus witnessing to Jesus’ love for all people.
“This is one way that God’s people can contribute to the health and the economic and social development of our country,” Akowanou said.
He added that another of the project’s goals is to offer young people skills in agriculture, caring for livestock, and a capacity to earn their living, thereby reducing the rate of delinquency.
A fourth expectation is that the agro-pastoral project will contribute income to the Bible school, whose grant from Mennonite Mission Network is planned to gradually phase out as the institution becomes increasingly rooted in its local constituency. In 2008, Benin Bible Institute’s own financial resources surpassed those contributed by the mission agency.
Partnerships with two North American congregations have contributed greatly to an understanding of what it means to be part of the global body of Christ with a common mission to share Jesus’salvation and abundant life. The trans-Atlantic collaboration includes visits, preaching and teaching exchanges, and the sharing of gifts. Covenant signings with Waterford Mennonite Church in Goshen, Ind. (2003), and St. Jacobs (Ont.) Mennonite Church (2007), helped to prepare the way for the realization of the agro-pastoral project.
Denise Diener and Gilberto Perez and their three children, Waterford’s representatives to Benin in 2010, provided a financial gift to Benin Bible Institute, making it possible for Houngnon to complete an 18-month training program that equipped him to take leadership of the agro-pastoral project. Houngnon was a student, then an employee, of Benin Bible Institute, before being asked to direct the long-anticipated initiative.
This year, Becky and Luke Gascho and Dale Hess, also from Waterford, visited Benin in October. The two men are employees of Goshen College’s Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center, Luke Gascho as executive director and Hess as director of the sustainable agriculture program. Becky Gascho is a recently retired nonprofit administrator. Luke Gascho and Hess presented a one-day seminar on sustainable agriculture to approximately 90 Benin Bible Institute students, before taking their turn to be learners as they toured many projects throughout the country.
“What Benin Bible Institute wants to do at Oumako is very similar to the program I started at Merry Lea,” Hess said. “Dominique has well-thought-through ideas about how to launch the project and is already doing diversified agriculture, a good approach in the United States as well as in Benin.”
Houngnon has been busy since July. In addition to caring for garden plots, Houngnon is tending thousands of Moringa oleifera, seedlings that he will transplant or sell to villagers. Sometimes called “the miracle tree,” moringa has many uses and its leaves are a powerhouse of nutritional value.
Market women come to the project to buy fresh garden produce – tomatoes, greens and peppers. At the end of this growing season, there will be 1.5 hectares of corn and manioc to harvest. In a few years, the orchard will bear fruit.
Houngnon’s focus in the coming months will be the construction of shelters for small animals, such as goats, rabbits, snails and grass-cutters – bush rats, a delicacy in Benin, that thrive when grown domestically.
He is eagerly awaiting the arrival of Benin Bible Institute students, and plans to start them out learning about vegetable gardens and chickens, where they will soon be enjoying the fruits of their labor.
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For immediate release.
Mennonite Mission Network, the mission agency of Mennonite Church USA, leads, mobilizes and equips the church to participate in holistic witness to Jesus Christ in a broken world. Media may contact Andrew Clouse at andrewc@mmnworld.net, 574-523-3024 or 866-866-2872, ext. 23024.
