Every Christian experiences God’s hand on his life. Yet no two of us experience the exact same things in our walk with Him. God in his wisdom twice saw fit to bring me close to death. I do not understand all the reasons why. But I can say that I have a deep sense that my life is in God’s hand and that He has a purpose for me. Actually, this is no more true of me than it is of any other person. We are all in the hand of God.

I have had two serious bouts of viral encephalitis, once in1986 and again in 1994. I do not understand all about the sovereignty of God, but I do believe that I am alive today because many of God’s people cared enough to pray. Each time I was sick, many prayed and God answered. No one prayed harder than Linda, my wife, who deeply loves me and had faith to believe that God was in complete control, no matter how bad the circumstances were.

Encephalitis is an infection of the brain. In some cases, it can be relatively minor, and an individual may not even know that he had it. In other cases, it can be deadly. Some kinds are reported to have a seventy percent mortality rate. Some who do live are severely brain damaged or paralyzed or both. Some remain an invalid for life. For some others, it takes years before they are able to return to a productive life. Those who do have a more complete recovery often will still experience long term symptoms such as short and long term memory problems, chronic fatigue, headaches, slowed responses, decreased concentration, and a host of other kinds of physical problems. I still experience many of these symptoms, such as memory problems, fatigue, slowed responses, and decreased concentration. Fortunately I do not have a major headache problem that many encephalitis survivors experience. Overall, however, my recovery is remarkable considering how severe both of my bouts with viral encephalitis were. I can only thank God for the health He has given me, and I have committed myself to serving Him as long as He gives me the physical and mental ability to do so.

In 1981, both of my parents and Linda’s mother all passed away within nine months of each other. After the death of our parents, we decided to begin looking into the possibility of entering full time Christian service. A couple of years later found us in the Amazon jungles of Ecuador, South America, where I was supervising the electrical installations in a hospital being built out in the jungle. We spent two years in Ecuador. All of us, my wife and I and our four young children, look back on those two years as the most enjoyable years of our lives. Our kids thoroughly enjoyed it and had many experiences that few kids ever get to experience.

I has been accepted as a staff member of the designer and builder of the hospital, Missionary TECH Team. After finishing our work in Ecuador, we returned to Boise, Idaho, to get ready to move to Longview, Texas, the headquarters of Missionary TECH Team. Little did I know that before we could move to Texas, my whole life would be turned upside down by an illness that I had never heard of---Encephalitis.

Linda

It was a cold February day in 1986, in Boise, Idaho. The Benedict family was warm and happy in their older home in the country. Phil was an electrician and I (Linda), was a stay-at-home mom. Our four children were ages 9, 11, 13, and 15. It had been an average winter with the usual colds and viruses. The first week or so in February Phil missed three or four days of work because of the flu. He went back to work for two or three days, but woke up on February 13 not feeling well again.

I phoned his boss and told them he would not be in for work that day. As the day progressed, Phil began to get more quiet and seemed to be getting more unresponsive to what I was saying. I asked him if I should call the doctor and as a typical man, he said "no". By evening I realized something was drastically wrong and I called the ambulance to come and take him to

St. Alphonsus Hospital. We spent all night in the emergency room and by the next morning, February 14, Valentine’s Day, they had admitted him to the hospital, and the doctor came to me with the diagnosis of viral encephalitis. By this time Phil had slipped into a deep coma. The doctor said there was a one third chance that Phil would die, a one third chance that he would live but be permanently brain damaged or paralyzed, or a one third chance that he would live with some degree of recovery. This was a shock, but I believed that God would take care of him. About 9:00 a.m. our pastor, Brad Kolbo, came in and prayed with me. After that, God gave me such a perfect peace that He was in control of the situation and that everything would be all right. It was a supernatural peace that I cannot explain and that I had never experienced before.

It was a Catholic hospital and I can remember the "sisters" hovering around and coming in every few minutes to check on me and make sure that I was all right. I guess they expected me to "fall apart" or get hysterical or something. They were amazed at the peace that I had. Psalm 46:1, 2 says that God is our strength and our help, and we will not fear, no matter what happens. God gave me the peace and strength to do what needed to be done while Phil was sick.

The first thing that I did was to call friends and family all over the world and ask them to pray for Phil. People were praying for Phil in Ecuador, Africa, Mexico, Florida, New York, Washington, California, Texas, and many states in between. I believe that God answers prayer.

Every afternoon I would pick our kids up after school at 3:30 and take them home, fix supper for them, and then go back up to the hospital until 9:30 or 10:00. I would go home and spend the night with our kids, take them to school in the morning, and then go back up to the hospital until it was time to pick them up again. I wanted to stay with Phil every minute, but I felt that it was also important that I be with our children and reassure them and keep the routine in their lives.

As I sat by Phil’s bedside day after day, I kept praying that God would heal him, and would let us continue with our plans to be in Texas by fall to work with a missionary support organization called Missionary Tech Team. We had spent two years as support missionaries in Ecuador and we wanted to continue working with MTT.

As I sat there, I also read the Bible. God gave me two verses that really meant a lot to me during those difficult times. The first was I John 4:18. "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear..." The second one was Psalm 4:8. "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety." These verses further removed my fears and gave me peace that God loved us and would take care of us.

During Phil’s illness, many of our friends came to the hospital to visit and to pray with me. I continue to marvel at how the Lord works out the perfect timing for all situations. We have a friend, John Kunz, that we grew up with. After high school he went away to college and when he married, he and his wife moved to California where he pastored a church. They only got back to Boise once in a while to visit. Phil and I had spent two years in Chicago going to school, and then later we spent two years in Ecuador, so we had only seen John a few times in the twenty-two years since high school. God, in His love and compassion, arranged it so that John was in Boise when Phil was in the hospital with encephalitis. John’s wife had had a stroke several years earlier and he knew what I was going through. As well as encouragement, he gave me much helpful information about organizing all of the bills and taking care of financial matters.

On the fourth day of his hospitalization, Phil opened one eye briefly. On the next day, he opened both eyes and then closed them again. There didn’t seem to be any recognition of anyone or anything, but the coma was less deep. On the sixth day when I got to the hospital about

One of the first things that Phil asked me was where he was and why he was there. I told him he was in the hospital and had viral encephalitis, which is an infection of the brain. The next question was how long he had been there. I told him six days. His next statement was that it must have cost $2,000 so far. I just smiled and said, "at least that". I knew that it was well over $10,000 at that point, but I didn’t want him to worry about it.

During those first days after Phil regained consciousness, several things happened that made me realize that it could be a long haul before Phil was back to normal. While I was sitting by his bed, he asked me several times to close the window to keep the rain out. The window wasn’t open, and it wasn’t raining. He asked me if one of the medical machines was a radio. It was almost like a child seeing something for the first time, and wondering what it was. When he tried to pick up a glass of water to drink it, his coordination was off and he couldn’t make his hand go to the glass to pick it up. His balance was so far off that he couldn’t stand up straight and walk.

Several days after Phil woke up, I was sitting by his bed listening to the music that they play in the hallways of the hospital. He heard it too, recognized the song, and began singing the words along with the music. I knew from that moment on that he was going to be all right. The song he sang was, "No One Ever Cared For Me Like Jesus".

After another week in the hospital, it was time for me to go to the hospital finance office and make arrangements for payment before they would discharge Phil from their care. We did not have any medical insurance so they gave me a whole stack of forms to fill out for financial aid from various organizations and through various programs. I took these home and looked at them and it just seemed like God wanted me to just trust Him to get the bills paid. So the next day I went back to the office and told them that I would like to have a month to see how God would work it out for me to pay the bills. Surprisingly, they said they would give me three months. This was a very large hospital and they just don’t do things like that, but they did for us.

I told our pastor our situation, and he suggested that he write a letter to all of our friends and supporters and tell them of our need, which he did. Our church set up an account for us to handle any money that came in for our medical expenses. God answered our prayers for help and the money began pouring in. We were amazed and overwhelmed at the generosity of everyone. Several weeks later the hospital finance office called me and asked me how our finances were coming. I told them we had about $3,000 so far and I would bring it in and make a payment soon. To my amazement, they told me not to worry about it. They said they had extra funds in one of their accounts to aid people in need, and they were going to pay our entire hospital bill which was about $11,000. Praise the Lord! They said to keep whatever money we had and use it to help pay all of the doctors and for the tests, etc., which amounted to more than the hospital bill!

Before Phil could go home, he was transferred to another hospital in Boise for physical rehabilitation. He spent a week there as an in-patient and another week as an out-patient. By then he seemed to be functioning fairly normally. Everyone said he made a remarkable recovery. He went back to work as an electrician the next week, but had to quit because he experienced "brain fatigue" rather quickly. This condition improved as time went on.

The next month or two were a time of depression for Phil, wondering if he would ever be able to work again and how would he support his family and could we still work as missionaries. I didn’t know the answer to these questions, but I knew that God would take care of us and direct us. I did everything that I could to encourage Phil and take his mind off of the problems. Before Phil and I got married, we enjoyed bowling. Now it seemed like this would be something fun to do and would also help him regain his strength. While our kids were at school, we did quite a bit of bowling for several months, and it seemed to help us both.

Phil made the decision that unless God definitely closed the door, we would still aim to move to Texas that summer and begin working with Missionary Tech Team. God, in His mercy and love, gave Phil almost a complete recovery and at the end of August, we moved to Texas and began working with MTT. All of our medical bills were paid and enough money had come in to keep us going while Phil was out of work. Praise the Lord!

Considering everything, the work at Missionary TECH team went quite well. I was doing a number of different things. I supervised the installation of some heavy electrical equipment, did some electrical design, and represented TECH at several different colleges. I was traveling and enjoying it. However, I was also sensing that God was leading on to a more direct ministry. Two years later, when I was asked to become the director of a ministry in southeast Oklahoma, I accepted.

The doctors were never able to find out exactly what caused Phil’s original bout of encephalitis. There are a number of things that can cause it, but none of them seemed to fit Phil’s case. One possible explanation that I am now convinced was right, was that it was a complication of the influenza that he had had the week before. They told me that he would never get it again.

Well, guess what?! He did. On Veteran’s Day, November 11, 1994, Phil woke up with a headache. By noon he was becoming unresponsive to me. I knew immediately what it was. I went out in the backyard and sat at our picnic table and cried my heart out to the Lord that I didn’t want it to be encephalitis and I didn’t want to go through it again. But for some reason, God let it happen again, and He once again gave me the peace and strength to carry on and get through it.

Once again Phil said not to call the doctor, but by mid-afternoon I called our friend, Jess French, who was our pastor and also an EMT. He was at work, and right away he and the ambulance team came out to see Phil. They immediately took him to Tahlequah City Hospital where they began doing tests. I told them what I thought it was and after many tests, they reached the same conclusion--viral encephalitis. This time Phil did not go into as deep a coma and he was very restless and combative, but totally unresponsive to what was going on around him.

Our daughter, Roxanne, was attending John Brown University in Siloam Springs, AR, at the time and took off from school and came home as soon as she knew Phil was sick. She came up to the hospital for a while, and then I asked her to go home and call friends and family again to ask them to pray.

About 6:00 the next morning, Phil had a seizure and stopped breathing. After they revived him, they immediately made arrangements to fly him by helicopter to Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, about 75 miles away. Because of threatening weather, it was questionable whether they would be able to fly, but they did. Because of rules and regulations and lack of space in the chopper, I was not able to fly with Phil. As I stood there with our pastor and his wife on that cold dreary November day and watched the chopper take off with Phil, I was very close to tears. But God gave me peace and the strength to go on. I hurried home and got my toothbrush, etc., and enough clothes to last for a week or so, and headed to Tulsa along with our daughter and Phil’s brother, Stephen, who also lives here in Tahlequah. We all drove our own cars because I was planning to stay with Phil as long as he was in the hospital, and they had to get back to school and work. All of our children were on their own by this time, and there was nothing that would keep me from staying constantly with Phil.

The nurses were all very nice and allowed me to sleep in a chair by Phil’s bed at night, even though they said I wasn’t supposed to. Because Phil was so restless, the doctor gave him some kind of new drug to put him in a deeper coma to allow him to rest easier. After a couple of days, they started easing up on the drug twice a day to see if he was "back" yet. On the fourth day, he opened his eyes briefly and then closed them again. That night when they let up on the drug, Phil was conscious again. Praise God for answering my prayers again!

In another day or so, they moved Phil out of ICU and down to the medical floor. The nurses there also let me sleep in a recliner by Phil’s bed. Then one day I was told that the nurse that was going to be on duty that night was a real stickler for the rules and I probably wouldn’t be able to stay with Phil that night. I was pretty unhappy at the thought, but I was determined to stay if I possibly could. That night the nurse came in and surveyed the situation and I guess she saw that Phil and I were really attached to each other. She asked how long we had been married and I told her twenty-eight years. She said, "That’s good enough for me", and let me sleep in the chair by Phil that night, too.

After two weeks in the hospital, Phil was released and was able to go directly home. He was weak and got tired real easily for quite a while, but had a lot fewer problems that he did after the first illness. Once again, God gave him an almost complete recovery. Tiredness and "brain fatigue" are continuing problems that there is no cure for, and he has just had to learn to adjust his life style around them. When he gets tired, he takes a fifteen minute nap and/or does some physical activity outside, and he is able to go again. There are some days when he just feels "rotten" and can’t do much, but the next day is usually better.

Our financial situation this time around was no better than the first. Since Phil had already had encephalitis, it was excluded from our insurance policy. And we had no money saved up for emergencies. Our pastor, Jess French, wrote a letter to our friends and supporters explaining our needs. I explained our situation to the hospital billing office, and they greatly reduced our hospital bill to just $6,000. In just a couple of months, gifts from family and friends paid that off along with all of the other medical bills that were incurred during Phil’s illness. Praise the Lord for His goodness!

During this second bout with encephalitis, the doctors did all kinds of tests and they were not able to determine the exact cause of Phil’s illness either. From research that Phil and I have done, we are almost certain that this time it was triggered by the flu shot (the first time by the flu and the second time by the flu shot). Phil had his first and only flu shot about a week before he came down with it the second time. No more flu shots for us!

We are thankful that God has brought us through these difficult times, and we are still able to serve Him.