SPY MISSION: Danville teen headed to Mongolia with relief organization

When Ben Kendrick of Danville was only 3 or 4 years old, teachers told his mom, Kathy, he sometimes stood on a piece of playground equipment during recess above a crowd of the other kids — preaching.

There were other times like this, too, when young Ben took to preaching.

By the time he was 5, he had decided he would probably be a preacher someday, but he is hardly the type to sit around and wait until he is an adult to start helping mankind raise its game.

On July 21, Ben will board a plane to travel with 20 other young people to Mongolia as part of the Samaritan’s Purse Youth  — or SPY — Team.

Samaritan’s Purse is the non-denominational aid and relief organization founded in 1970 and headed by Franklin Graham III that supports projects in more than 100 countries, often one brightly wrapped shoe box at a time.

The boxes are filled all over this country with small comforts like stuffed animals and basic needs like toothbrushes and washcloths and pencils. Workers then get the boxes to those in need using a complex and efficient network of churches in recipient countries.

The nine counties that make up the Danville Area Team produced 18,755 shoe boxes in 2011. 

Young people 16-20 years old who have been working with the churches involved in the process nationwide can apply to be on the SPY team. Many apply, but only a few are chosen based on written and video applications. Only two were chosen from a three-state region that includes Kentucky.

Just as his mother already had noticed, Ben had that something special and was chosen.

At a time when many boys Ben’s age are struggling with good versus evil, how did Ben come to be committed to a principled path?

“My parents,” he said. “I have really good parents.”

Before he can elaborate, his mother interrupts.

“Oh no, it’s not that, or just that or anything. He was already ... he has always been something ... had something ... special.”

Ben will be a junior at Boyle County High School in the coming school year. He has three jobs right now, two at separate locations giving private tennis lessons. His mom is an appellant attorney who works in Lexington. He golfs, too, with his dad, Mark, who is a middle school teacher. Ben has an older brother, Jared, and two sisters — one younger and one older — who were born in Korea, Mia and Jung Won Jo. He has grown up in Junction City First Baptist Church, he said.

His family’s dedication to its faith, to each other and to easing the suffering of other children in the world must certainly be a big part of why Ben is such a mature and caring young man.

“I knew when they said where this year’s mission would be going, that it was for me,” he said. “Even though this was the first time I had applied. We had, or thought we did, an idea about how long it would take until the decision was reached, and when I didn’t hear from them, I started thinking maybe it was not going to happen but then ... Dad got an email, and, yeah. I am very excited to be going.”

The reason the region resonates with him, he said, is because of his grandfather, Lawrence Kendrick.

Mission trips are a Kendrick family calling. Ben’s father and brother, along with other family members, have traveled all over the globe to practice what they preach.

Lawrence Kendrick died on one of those trips from injuries he received in a car crash in Russia. Ben said the idea of being in the same region as that tragedy, performing the same kind of kindnesses, makes him very happy.

“God has helped us, his family, work through the tragedy by giving us the peace that comes with knowing he was right where he loved to be, doing what he loved to do, when he died. He would have preferred that over another 10 years just sitting still somewhere,” he said.

 

SO YOU KNOW 

A Mongolian SPY Team prayer and commissioning service for Ben Kendrick will be 7 p.m. July 18 at Junction City First Baptist Church, 3860 U. S. 127 South, two miles south of Danville.