He received his undergraduate degree from Van Guard University in Southern California. He graduated from Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California with an MA as a Dr. of Missiology.

Dr. Yusuf has served in Sudan, Kenya and for the last 15 years in Ethiopia. He has planted 98 churches and is devoted to developing local church leaders to spread the Gospel throughout Ethiopia.

As you support Benyamen’s ministry, you will be supporting thousands of people in Ethiopia who are being lifted, amid many trials and hardships, by the Good News of Jesus Christ – as his ministry attends to the humanitarian needs of his people.

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“I Dare to Call Him My Lord and Savior”

The Story of Dr. Benyamen Yusuf

By Dr. Joel David Baker

Imagine for a moment that you are a twelve year old boy on your way home from school. You live in Harar, Ethiopia, located 489 miles east of the capital city, Addis Ababa. There is smoke coming out of the chimney of your hut, and you are excited. It means that your mother is cooking a meal for your father, who will be spending the night. With 7 wives living in 7 different huts, only once a week do you get to see and spend time with your father, a Muslim priest.

This is a story about Benyamen (pronounced Benny Ameen) Yusuf. It is a remarkable story. It is a true story. It is a story that is still being written.

Despite the once a week pleasure that Beny experienced when his father came to his home, dark clouds of doubt were moving into his life regarding his Muslim beliefs. They were precipitated by the death of his sister, Nabha, four years his younger. When she was critically ill, Beny went up to the roof of his home and, holding her in his arms, cried out to Allah to heal her. When she died, Beny’s faith was shaken and he was very depressed.

During this time, his older brother, Mohammad, was attending an agricultural college sponsored by Oklahoma State University. It was located about 20 minutes outside of Harar, and he invited Beny to come for a visit. Mohammad thought he might be able to cheer Beny up, especially by having him attend a soccer game he was playing in. After the game, the coach, a Norwegian, invited Beny and his brother to his home. The coach was showing the boys some slides of his native Norway. One particular picture fascinated Beny.

It was a picture of a Lutheran church, which contained a stained glass window depicting two men. One of the men looked very compassionate and he was touching the forehead of the other man. When Beny asked the coach to explain who the men were, he was told that one man was a leper and the other was “Jesus, the son of God.” Beny had only been taught, through the Koran, that Jesus was a prophet. When he asked the coach if he believed in Jesus, he was told no. The coach was an atheist. “How can I find out about Jesus”, Beny asked the Norwegian. “You have to read the Bible”, was his reply.

So, Beny went home and learned that if he wanted to read the Bible he would have to first learn the national language of Ethiopia, Amhric. He studied for the next six months and finally knew the language well. In order to get a Bible, he took a bus 180 miles to a mission bookstore, and began reading at Genesis chapter one, verse one. For the next year and a half, Beny read the Bible, not understanding what he was reading until he got to the Gospel of John, chapter one. It was there that he read, beginning in verse 11, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God --- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” Beny recalls, “I never knew that I could become a child of God. I only had been told that I could be a slave of Allah.”

So he went back to the mission bookstore and asked the man who had sold him the Bible how he could receive Christ. The man told him that he should not do it, that he would be rejected by his family, that he should at least wait until after he had finished college. When Beny asked the man what would happen to him if he died, the man had no answer for him. He did, however, give Beny some pamphlets to read.

After Beny returned home, he read the Gospel of John over and over again. One of the pamphlets that he had been given contained the sinner’s prayer. On September 3rd, 1968, at the age of 14, Beny prayed and received Jesus Christ into his life.

He did not tell anyone about what he had done for three months.

But then, he told some of his classmates at school. The classmates told Beny’s parents, who were extremely angry with him. His father and brothers beat him, trying to make him change his mind. When he refused, he was finally banished from the family and was left all alone.

For the next four years, in order to finish high school, Beny supported himself by planting flowers by the riverbank which he sold to the local hospital, washed and ironed clothes for teachers, and paid 50 cents per month rent for a mat to sleep on at a large house that held 20 students. Upon completion of high school, he learned of a Bible school in Kenya. He wrote the school and they told him that he could come. Having no funds, Beny walked all the way from his hometown in Ethiopia to the school in Kenya. It took him three months. He spent three years at the school, working for room and board, and getting a tuition scholarship from people in Japan.

Now 21, Beny went to Addis Ababa, and took a job working for a church as an evangelist. Six months later, he began an odyssey that took him to America where he studied at two different schools, one in Minneapolis and the other in Florida. Eventually a mission agency called “Every Home Crusades” hired Beny to return to Ethiopia and do evangelism amongst his people. Just three months after returning to his homeland, he was arrested and put in prison.

The communist authorities had tapped his phone. He made regular calls about his work to the sponsoring mission board in America, and the charges leveled against him were that he was a spy for the CIA.

For a period of seven weeks, Beny underwent physical torture. He was beaten regularly and hung upside down for hours. Over and over again, he was told that all he had to do was to sign a paper saying that he renounced his faith in Jesus Christ, and he would be set free. Beny refused.

One of the jailers was particularly cruel to Beny. Each night, as he checked his cell, he would extinguish his cigar on Beny’s bare chest. Numerous scars remain to this day as a result. But this jailer was to play a role in Beny’s escape. Beny had been praying about getting out of jail, and as he was doing so, one day he noticed some rats that were eating bread crumbs in the corner of his cell. The thought occurred to him, “If God provides for even these rats, surely he can provide for me and help me to escape.” He asked God to give him the words to say. That night, the mean jailer once again burned Beny’s skin with his cigar. As he turned to leave the cell, Beny heard himself saying, “Have a good night.” The jailer turned around and asked Beny to tell him again what he had just said. “Have a good night “, Beny repeated. “How can you say that to me after what I have done to you?” the jailer asked. It was then that Beny was able to talk about his faith in Christ, telling the jailer about God’s faithfulness time after time.

The jailer helped Beny escape from prison.

Returning to America, the people who had supported Beny told him that they were disappointed in him, that he should have stayed in jail and died for his faith. Utterly shaken, Beny gave up on his plans for ministry and spent a year studying political science. But the call of God for evangelism was still strong on his life and he abandoned his studies, enrolling instead at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where he began a Doctor of Missiology program in the fall of 1980.

During the spring of 1981, a pastor in Oklahoma received a flier in the mail regarding Fuller and its School of World Mission. The pastor had a strange experience when looking at the flier, as he had an instant and rather unexplainable attraction to the person pictured. It was a photo of Beny, who was described as one of the many nationals from foreign lands who were preparing at Fuller with the goal of returning to their countries where they would engage in strategic leadership roles.

The pastor invited the Dean of the Seminary, Dr. Paul Pierson, to come to Oklahoma and preach, and asked him to bring Beny along as well. It was June 11, 1982, (“at 5:00 p.m. on a Thursday”, Beny recalls, over 20 years later). The congregation learned that Beny was living in an old beat up car and was eating one meal a day at Wendy’s, where he got all you can eat Chili for 99 cents. A close bond was formed between the people in Oklahoma and Beny, an ordained partnership that has continued for over two decades. Individuals provided funds, the church’s mission budget also was a source of support, and eventually a remarkable man finished his education and returned to help his people.

What has happened over the last several years is simply stunning. Beny has been responsible for planting 96 churches, which now have a combined total of over 13,000 members. He raises funds to care for 85 homeless, elderly women. He also has been responsible for the monthly support of 350 children who have been orphaned either by the AIDS epidemic in Ethiopia or the civil war in that land. In addition, another 2500 plus children twice a year receive school clothes and medical attention. He has written three books on the themes of Muslim evangelism, church planting, and leadership. A charismatic preacher and teacher who emanates love and compassion out of his love for Christ, Beny has preached to as many as 50,000 people at one time.

This Christmas, Beny Yusuf will mark his 50th birthday. He is reasonably sure of the year of his birth, but since he has no idea of the actual day, for the last several years he has observed his birthday on the day his Lord is celebrated. How fitting, for one who has steadfastly and prayerfully depended on God to supply his needs and the oftentimes overwhelming needs of his Ethiopian brothers and sisters. How fitting also, for one who has known more hardship and persecution than most of us ever have or hopefully ever will, but has unwaveringly continued to dare to call Jesus Christ his Lord and Savior.