Ben Eidse

Obituary

Ben Friesen Eidse was born October 12, 1928, in Morris, MB, the 12th of D.K and Elizabeth Eidse’s 20 children. He was their last, surviving child. What a reunion in heaven!

Ben grew up harvesting wheat on the Rosenort prairie, noticing the genuine joy of his big brother, Nick, and a farm hand. After reading Nick’s gospel tracts, Ben, too, gave his life to Christ.

His immigrant Mennonite parents spoke German and Dutch German, and Ben soaked up a love of languages. He was sent to Steinbach for grade 10, where he met a friendly red-head, Helen Reimer. When he returned home, he wanted to become a teacher. But his father kept him home the next year, preferring to make him a “gentleman farmer.”

That may have been Ben’s most path-setting year, but not in the direction his father intended. Ben ordered courses in personal evangelism from Moody Bible Institute, and taped memory verses to the tractor fender. These helped him win his brothers and sisters to the Lord.

The next year, he attended grade 11 at Steinbach Bible Academy, with its focus on missions. There, he reconnected with Helen, and accepted assignment to Pelly, SK, with Western Gospel Mission, an outreach organized by Ben D. Reimer. The mission’s 1928 Pontiac soon gave out, and Ben switched to a bicycle. Dave Schellenberg wrote in The Messenger, “Ben Eidse…didn’t have much more than a mission and a bike.”

Eidse pedaled to Bible classes in schools ten miles away, carrying his guitar and Bible – unwittingly training for Congo. People took pity and invited him to stay for supper and night. Soon he expanded to cottage meetings in peoples’ homes, which helped forge deeper relationships.

Ben Eidse married Helen, on March 30, 1952, after she’d completed nurse’s training. Their first of four daughters, Hope, arrived in 1953, the same year they were accepted as the first overseas missionaries of the Evangelical Mennonite Conference (EMC) Board of Missions. The board was formed to send them under what is now Africa Inter Mennonite Mission (AIMM).

They worked among the Lunda-Chokwe of Kamayala-Kahemba area, in southwestern Democratic Republic of Congo, helping to build a medical-church-education centre. They also learned the heart language and proverbs of the people. Together, they deepened their faith in spiritual battle against sorcery and corruption, and faced life-threatening disease, revolution and disability.

Faith was born on February 19, 1955, the day Helen’s father, Peter D. Reimer, died in Canada. She weighed just five pounds and the Eidse’s received a card, “Congratulations on your little faith.” At six months, she was given up for dead of cerebral malaria. But Ben prayed a bold, radical prayer. He begged God to bring her back. Then he picked her up and held her, and she opened her eyes.

Charity arrived on October 28, 1956, weighing nine pounds, “the greatest of them all.” And Helen’s kidneys shut down. While in hospice, Ben read her James 5:16, “Confess your sins…that you may be healed.” But realized he was the one with sins to confess. He raced back to the men building the Kamayala church and apologized for getting angry at them and shorting their meagre pay. They said that a white man had never admitted doing wrong and had never apologized to them. When Ben returned to the hospital, Helen’s kidneys had started functioning again.

In 1957, the family returned to Canada where Helen continued her recovery, and Ben taught at Steinbach Bible College. That fall, his sister, Martha, said the Rosenort community was praying for 80 young people who were not following the Lord. Ben held revival meetings, but the young people stopped coming. He was burdened, unable to eat, so he went to the wheat fields to meet with them, one-by-one. Fifty people committed their lives in the two-week revival, and on June 22, 1958, 37 youth ages 15 to 23, joined the Rosenort EMC.

Eidse returned to college, and received a BA from Goshen College in 1959, followed by an MA from Wheaton graduate school. He and Helen had been advised not to have more children and not to return to Congo. But Ben returned on his own for five months in 1961, during tribal conflict. Refugees flooded in from Angola, and Ben delivered food relief and services. Over 600 came for counselling, among them 31 chiefs.

Grace was born after his return to Canada, on November 25, 1961, and the family returned to Congo in 1963. The 1964 Simba revolution caught the family apart, and Faith was rescued with missionaries from Mukedi. Ben sent the rest of his family ahead to a UN refugee camp in Kinshasa, and filled his van with students, driving them through the front lines to safety.

After the conflict, gas shortages continued when they returned to Kamayala, and inspired Ben to join with local pastors in creating an innovative scripture memory program that changed the character of entire villages. Two hundred were saved, and the neighbouring Catholic mission asked to borrow the lesson material. During this term, Ben sustained a progressively crippling, spinal cord/neck injury.

In 1969, Eidse was selected by American Bible Societies to lead translation of the Bible into modern, dynamic Chokwe. He teamed up with a pastor and folklorist and completed the work in 1982. Native speakers were delighted to use the more vibrant expressions when praying or talking about God. The translation team was also asked to write a lesson book on the Christian disciple’s response to sorcery, the fear and temptation to use it to harm others.

After 30 years in Congo, Eidse was appointed president of Steinbach Bible Institute (later SBC). He endorsed its Anabaptist teachings, led its accreditation by the Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges, as well as a significant expansion and debt-free budget. After three terms, 1983-92, he was accepted to New College at the University of Edinburgh. There he completed his doctoral classes in African Studies studying with international students.

However, in 1996, after returning to Canada, Helen suffered a major stroke and Ben became her primary caregiver for nearly 16 years. During this time, Eidse was named SBC’s first chancellor, and counseled many people in a healing prayer ministry at their apartment in Woodhaven Manor.

The Eidses also received a Lifetime Service Award from the Association of Anabaptist-Mennonite Missiologists. The award recognized their leadership in translating the Bible, planting 100 churches and establishing a medical-church-education center in southwestern Congo. The Eidses compiled their life stories in Light the World (Friesen Press, 2012).

After his wife died, Eidse completed and published his thesis research, The Disciple and Sorcery: The Lunda-Chokwe View (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Inc., July 2015). It presents an effective response by the Christian disciple to sorcery. His children, Charity and John Schellenberg, have seen these lessons applied in a deeply transformed worldview in their continuing work in Congo today.

Ben is survived by daughters: Hope (Ben Wiebe), Faith (Philip Kuhns), Charity (John Schellenberg), and Grace Eidse, and their families: David Wiebe and Cheryl Wong and son Simon; Rachel and Mostafa Skouta and children Sadie, Adam and Khadijah; LaDawna and Matthew Tremblay and children Eric, Matthew, Johnathan and Alana; Anthony Kuhns, Stefan Kuhns and Sarah Lerch; Charis and Chris Kehler, Lisa and Tim Spring and daughters Eden and Lily; Evan and Mel Schellenberg and children Emmanuel and Micah; Sol and Jordan Beaulieu and daughter Sophia Lynn; Johnathan Friesen; Dean Eidse; Kajia Rempel-Eidse and David Schlaikjaer, Savannah Eidse and Cole Ferencz.

Ben Eidse was happy he’d be laid to rest beside Helen at Steinbach Heritage Cemetery. The legacy of their work continues in the Mennonite churches of Congo, AIMM, in the EMC, at SBC and in all their children the world over. Pakisa Tshimika, of Kajiji, said, “I wouldn’t have been able to read the Bible in my mother tongue if it weren’t for Ben Eidse.”

The family wishes to thank the many who have expressed kindness and service, especially those who visited Ben in the Niverville Heritage Personal Care Home (PCH) and his staff and caregivers who attended him there since December 6, 2016.

In memoriam, Ben was honoured at Niverville Heritage PCH and in his home community with a viewing at Rosenort EMC on Saturday, April 28, 2018. His funeral at Steinbach EMC, Sunday, April 29, 2018, is live-streamed at semconline.com.

A viewing is planned at Rosenort Evangelical Mennonite Church, Saturday, April 28, at 7 p.m., and funeral at Steinbach EMC, Sunday, April 29 at 2:30 with viewing prior to the service. Interment follows at Steinbach Heritage Cemetery.

Donations in memory of Ben may be made to 4C: Creating Capacity in Communities of Congo – Accountable Development Works, 1574 Erin St., Winnipeg MB R3E 2T1

Funeral service will be streamed on YouTube semconline.

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