Tom Benton, the new expedition coordinator for the International Rescue and Relief Program, appears to be as calm and serene as a mountain lake at sunrise. He speaks softly and thoughtfully. But the world keeps drawing this gentle soul into scenes of chaos and danger straight out of the evening news.
It all started in 1999 after he graduated from Washington Adventist University (then Columbia Union College) with a biology major. His teaching credentials were one week old when he heard the Adventist Development and Relief Agency call for volunteers to help refugees fleeing the war in Kosovo. Benton raised his hand and landed in Albania. “My journals from back then are a bit cringe,” he admits. “I talk about wanting to go be at the center of where the world’s attention is at the moment.”
In 2000, he returned to the States and worked in outdoor education. However, the buildup to the war in Iraq caused a growing conviction that he should serve in that part of the world. “It was one of those times when I felt God telling me I should really be getting ready for this,” he says. Benton gave notice at the youth camp where he worked and waited for the call that he was sure would come. ADRA did call, inviting him to be Iraq Country Director. Benton began coordinating shipments of medicine across the Turkish border to clinics in northern Iraq. He worked in cities such as Baghdad, Sinjar and Mosul. “It was a wild, wild experience,” he remembers. ”It felt like this interesting mix of adventure and crisis and Bible history all wrapped into one.”
Then an earthquake leveled a city in Bam, Iran, and he was off to help in that country. Next, he went to help in the refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan. At the same time, Sirill, a young Norwegian woman, traveled to Sudan as a health advisor for ADRA. There, among the tarps and latrine pits, love bloomed. After getting married, the couple moved around the globe, including a stint in Thailand working with projects to protect girls who were in danger of being sold into the sex trade.
Endings and beginnings
At the beginning of this year, Benton was arranging support to keep basic health clinics stocked and operating in the war-torn countries of Myanmar and Yemen. The end of USAID funding for those projects was the beginning of his move to Union. “I have seen God’s hand in the timing of this,” says Benton, calm and unruffled as always. The Benton family includes one daughter who attends Georgia Cumberland Academy. She is named Geneina after the town in western Sudan where her parents met.
International rescue and relief majors spend one semester in a foreign country as a capstone experience. In recent years, that has brought Union’s students to Malawi during the spring semester. As expedition coordinator, Benton will plan and lead the international travel as well as work on campus during the fall semesters and assist with the university’s disaster response deployments. “I hope to share with students some of my experience, including some of the mistakes I’ve made, so that they’ll be better prepared than I was when I jumped into this,” he says. “You know, I wish I’d had a chance to be a part of something like IRR before I started this work.”
Benton appears to be a good fit for the IRR program. Like the other faculty and students, he’s cool under pressure, always ready to move toward a crisis instead of running away from it. Always ready to help.
