In 1997 Burgos Mennonite Church in Burgos, Spain, sent a delegation to Benin to teach at Institut Biblique du Benin. While there, they met a Marie Sagbohan, who welcomed children from families who had experienced crises, like the death of their parents.
When they returned to Spain, the team members couldn’t shake the needs they witnessed, especially for children who had no one to provide for their daily needs of food, shelter and love.
Three years later the fruit from the visit began ripening in the founding of La Casa Grande (The Big House), a home for orphaned and abandoned children in Cotonou, Benin, that began as a partnership between the Mennonite church in Burgos and the Christian community in Benin.
La Casa Grande celebrated its 10-year anniversary in October 2010.
Esther Vargas is a member of Burgos Mennonite Church who serves on the board of La Casa Grande. She says that since the home opened in 2000, 43 children have found permanent or temporary refuge. There are currently 15 boys and 14 girls.
Some of the children, like twins Pierre and Pierrot, just need a place to land temporarily. Their mother died in childbirth, and their father tried hard to work and care for them, but didn’t believe he could provide adequately. He brought them to La Casa Grande when they were two years old, and visited them regularly.
Five years later, after he had remarried and felt more stable, he came back for them.
Others, like nine-year-old Pascaline, find permanent residence at the home. Her father died when she was five, and one year later her mother fell ill and died. Her grandparents took in her and her three siblings, but they both died within a month of each other. Her grandmother’s brother brought Pascaline, the youngest, to La Casa Grande as a last resort.
While living in La Casa Grande the children have the option to either study through high school or learn a trade, like sewing or carpentry. Those who graduate from high school receive help in continuing university studies. Children who have living parents go back to their families, while those who have been orphaned are placed with a family from one of the local churches.
La Casa Grande purchased a tract of land in 2004, but operated out of rented houses until 2008. In May of 2008, after having spent four years constructing red-brick dormitories, a dining room, a school building and sinking an 85-foot well, members of the Burgos and Benin churches inaugurated the Village d’enfants Fifatin— Place of Peace Children’s Village.
In addition to creating a home for children, La Casa Grande staff holds a weekly Good News Club on Saturdays for children in surrounding communities, and every summer they organize a weeklong camp.
Paulin Bossou and Esther Zingbe, his wife, are the directors of La Casa Grande. While initially the project was focused on children who were brought to La Casa Grande, the organization has now expanded into a development organization that is responding to its community’s many needs.
“La Casa Grande is a practical response to several ailments that undermine the Beninese society,” Bossou said. “We can now say the Beninese people, in particular, and Africans in general, need what La Casa Grande has to offer, not only to orphaned children, but in the areas of education, health and community development projects.”
Among the most important needs they meet, he said, are the spiritual ones.
“We do everything on the basis of the love of Christ. We are trying to make sure these children can grow up in a Christian environment so that one day they may also reflect the Lord’s love to others, because we have the firm conviction that the world can change with the love of God.”
Steve Wiebe-Johnson, Mennonite Mission Network’s director for Africa, said the home in Benin is a remarkable project that began with a simple prayer.
“Our friends from Burgos saw the need and began to pray about that need,” he said. “They began to network both in Benin and back in Burgos, and ten years later there is a multi-directional partnership between the City of Burgos, the Evangelical congregations in Burgos and Benin, the municipality of Allada in Benin, and Mennonite Mission Network.”
The Mennonite movement in Spain began in the 1960s, when Spanish Christians living in Belgium first met Mennonite mission workers serving with Mennonite Board of Missions, a predecessor agency to Mennonite Mission Network. The outreach project in Benin, then, is essentially a grandchild of Mennonite Mission Network. For Wiebe-Johnson, it is an exciting example of listening as mission.
“Ministry follows relationship,” he said, “and when we take our partners seriously, we listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to them. When their vision meets with our priorities we can collaborate even though the vision didn’t originate with us.”
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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.
