The Kingdom of Dahomey was settled by the French and was given independence on August 1, 1960. Mathiew Kerekou led an uprising that took power in the early 1970s. Kerekou was influenced by Marxism and started to implement it in the country. In 1989 when the Iron Curtain fell in the Soviet Union, Kerekou saw the economic situation deteriorate and changed some of his leanings to a democracy. In 1991 the country had it’s first official vote for its leader after democracy was instituted. Soglo the prime minister was elected instead. Kerekou went into a state of silence which was looked at culturally as a sign of his repentance for wrongs committed in his early administration.
At that time a man named Romain Zannou was challenged to pray for his leader. He met with Kerekou several times near the end of Kerekou’s term in office and they agreed to meet later. But when Zannou came to Kerekou’s house to resume their meetings, Kerekou didn’t want to see him. He said he would wait and often waited for several hours. Zannou tried to see Kerekou almost every day for over a year and a half! He was told no every time and then he waited. Finally Kerekou decided to let him in and they resumed their Bible Study which resulted in kerekou’s salvation. In 1996 Mathieu Kerekou was re-elected as leader of the country. He attended the Global meeting on World Evangelism in South Africa, in the middle of 1997 and asked several hundred business men from around the world to come and evangelize his country.
Benin was the birthplace of voodooism and it spread to the neighboring countries and eventually to the Caribbean with the slave trade. So, according to Kerekou, Benin put so much evil into the world and he wanted Christians to come and evangelize Benin to help them put good into the world again.
When I heard that story in fall of 1997 I endeavored to go to this country to help them put good into the world. I looked it up in the resource book called Operation World, and found several tribes/people groups listed with various needs. One group caught my attention:
Idacca – “30,000 + with no mission work among them”…
That line captured my heart and I started to pray for them, asking God to send someone to this tribe, or allow me to go there myself and work among them.
In 2003, I started college in Colorado and graduated with an Associates degree in Computer Information Systems. Nearing the end of my time at college I started looking toward the future and what I should do for my next step. I looked into New Tribes Bible Institute, and I felt like this would be the best place to prepare for a career in Missions. When I started (September 2006) I asked if they had any works in Benin, but they told me they didn’t. Near the beginning of my time at NTBI, NTM changed the scope of ministry and opened up the region of West Africa which included Benin. Near the end of our training in Canada (May 2011), leaders of NTM West Africa traveled to Benin on some preliminary surveys and found an Idacca man who was working with Wycliffe Bible Translators to put a team in place that will translate the Bible into the Ede-Idacca language!!! They are hopeful of a partnership with NTM for their future church planting. You can imagine my excitement when I heard this news. There are several more trips that need to be made into Benin, but with this progression, I have confidence that God will allow my family and I to go to the Idacca tribe and preach the gospel!!!