11/16/2025
As shared by Dr. Ray Jackson at Barry Benton’s funeral service.
In March of 1984, Barry Benton flew my wife Bobby and I to Haiti in a six-seat Cessna 185. Our companions were an elderly devout couple from Germany who had immigrated to America after WWII and a Southern Adventist University Administrative Assistant who had immigrated to America from England. We met a brilliant Haitian statesman, Ducange Salomon, who was memorizing the entire Bible due to failing vision from glaucoma. We et his Registered Nurse wife, Ivy Salomon, whom we would later call, “The Mother Theresa of Haiti”. We worked that week in the Medical Clinic, climbed the surrounding mountains, met the Haitian ministry team, and attended Sabbath services.
Upon returning from Haiti, an Eastern Kentucky University Campus Navigator Minister, Nick Nickles, invited eight men from our Church to commit to a weekly in-depth Bible study replete with Scripture memorization.
This assembly of Saints - Barry, Ducange, Ivy, and Nick - encouraged me and redirected my life into a radical change of Lordship. Jesus moved in and many a friend and old habit moved out.
Barry flew his first team to Ranquitte, Haiti in November of 1977. For the next ten years Barry practiced law full time, flew as many as three weekend teams a year to Haiti, and regularly spoke to churches and small groups to invite them to come see what God was doing on the mission field.
Haiti was and is the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere. God was calling Christians from around the world to evangelize it. It was an inexpensive mission experience and it introduced thousands of saints to the reality of trying to bring Jesus to a culture completely different from their own. Many of these short-term missionaries discovered their future callings, many returned home knowing that they were not equipped or called to such a work. Many experienced and saw the blessings uniquely reserved for poor Christian disciples.
In 1986, Barry and Sandy took over as Directors of ADRA, one of the USAID bulk surplus food distributors to schools and certified mission groups in Haiti, and became full-time missionaries.
Ever the builder of teams which meshed with Myers-Briggs Personality Profile, Barry asked this ENTJ to take over Christian Flights while he and Sandy were serving in Port-au-Prince.
The first change that this non-pilot made after assuming the Presidency of Christian Flights, was to start flying commercially. That meant three things: we could take bigger teams, we could take many more supplies as checked baggage, and it added two days to our trips - a day driving or flying down to Ranquitte from Port-u-Prince, and another day leaving Ranquitte to get to Port-au-Prince for our flight back to the US. Later we would be able to shorten these entry and exit days by flying in and out of Cap Haitien.
Christian Flights concentrated on education, healthcare, farming, terracing, soil preservation, reforestation, water wells, and Christian leadership development. We built the first Secondary School in Ranquitte. The students that graduation from Calhoun-Spady High School would become the teachers of four other Ranquitte High Schools. The Medical Clinic that was initially just run by Ivy and one or two female assistants developed into a regional, dependable health care facily with Haitian trained Physicians and Nurses, a Laboratory, an in-house pharmacy, a regional nutritional program for starving children, preventive care educational training, maternal and infant, and Ultrasound services.
All this is currently being threatened by gang violence across the island - kidnapping, murder, r**e, robberies. But God has been faithful - He has protected Ranquitte, He has protected our workers, He has continued to encourage our people in the harshest of circumstances.
I urge you to daily pray for Ranquitte, Christian Flights, and all the saints in Haiti. Believe me, there are people in Haiti whose faith and courage and hope for the future are vast, who believe that God is in the midst of a mighty work in Haiti, who do not see the obstacles but see beyond the obstacles to what Barry, Ivy, Ducange, and Nick dreamed of.
Forty-eight years ago this month, Ranger Barry Benton heard our Savior’s voice and accepted this commission:
“….go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, [20] and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19,20 NIV)
A half-century later, thousands of Americans have had a personal encounter with God in this small rural mountainous mission field. 20,000 Haitians have received healthcare and/or an education and/or a farm that now produces ten-fold more crops. Hundreds of starving infants have been brought back from impending death to life. And from this small Ranquitte mission filed, Haitian lawyers, physicians, nurses, and educators now serve in Jesus’ Name not just in Haiti, but in Europe, in the United States, and in Canada.
May God be glorified for all He has done in and through those who have labored in this mission field.
Amen.
