Courtesy Christy and Jim Benedict

Thirty years ago, Gordon Carter and his wife, Susan, lived in Twin Falls, Idaho, and felt the need to do more good in the world. So, they sold their businesses and did so.

He and his wife contacted a church leader in Tijuana, Mexico, about their needs. He told them that the Catholic nuns needed help in a specific area. “My wife worked with the nuns, and we converted an old swimming pool and made a classroom out of it,” Gordon said. “We also did some remodeling to another building.”

Motivated to do even more, Gordon and Susan created Charity Anywhere, a nonprofit organization with the mission “to give ‘ordinary people’ the life-changing opportunity to provide needed medical care, dental services, and basic shelter to less-developed countries while concurrently forever changing the mind and heart of the volunteer for good.” (https://charityanywhere.org/index.php/about/).

“The name Charity Anywhere comes from my heart,” Gordon said. “I love the word charity because it means the pure love of Christ. Our volunteers can take charity and give service to anyone, anywhere in the world.”

In 2001, a friend introduced Christy Benedict to Hope Alliance, an organization based out of Park City, and she went multiple trips with them. “I was the one who organized the teams from Cache Vally, Utah, to go to Iquitos, Peru,” said Christy, who had learned Spanish as a young missionary in Paraguay. “My role was to connect nurses and doctors and develop the teams for the trips. Many of the people were people who wanted to go again and again.”

Courtesy Christy and Jim Benedict

On the trip to Peru, she asked James Benedict, one of the doctors who spoke Spanish, to join the team. Christy was divorced, and Jim’s wife had passed away. They got to know each other, and they ultimately married in 2005 and have been humanitarian partners ever since.

After returning home from a trip to Peru, she needed a change, so she talked to her travel agent, who asked her if she had heard of Charity Anywhere. He told her she should contact Gordon Carter. She did, and the Benedicts have been with Charity Anywhere since then. Both Christy and Jim serve on the Charity Anywhere management team and have taken medical teams to Uganda, Guatemala, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic.

“Our experience with medical teams has evolved over the years. Initially, it was like mass chaos. You bring all the medical personnel and supplies and do triage,” Christy said. “People came with a variety of health challenges, and it seemed like we were just putting on BAND-AIDs. Other times, we did surgeries while teaching the local doctors how to do the surgeries.”

Charity Anywhere works diligently with communities to develop projects. “We zero in on mayors who can order containers of goods,” Gordon said. “Throughout the years, we have donated dental chairs; created dental clinics in the Amazon; delivered medical supplies, clothing, bed mats and other supplies to the community mayors; built homes and schools; donated sewing machines and set up sewing clinics; and provided medical and dental help in numerous countries.”

Charity Anywhere has experienced many amazing miracles. One happened during the COVID-19 pandemic when Gordon was at the Humanity Center in Salt Lake gathering supplies. The warehouse manager asked if Gordon could use 250,000 disposable operating gowns.

Courtesy Christy and Jim Benedict

“The amazing part of the story was Dr. Zambrano, our Ecuador medical director, had been asked by Ecuador’s Secretary of Health if there was a possibility to ship 200K hospital gowns to their country,” Gordon said. “They had a great need, and here we were being offered 250K hospital gowns to supply that request. What a miracle!”

Another miracle happened in the Dominican Republic on a beach near Barahona. Just prior to their LDS Charities mission, Christy and Jim were looking for larimar, a blue stone found only in the Dominican Republic. A 14-year-old young man approached Christy and offered to help her look for stones. She realized that he was deaf and tried to write to him in Spanish, but he couldn’t read or write anything in Spanish except his name: Andy. His friends told her a bunch of kids like Andy briefly attended school, but they were too much trouble, so they were kicked out.

Christy made a rash promise to take care of this situation when they returned. Soon, they were back in the DR on their LDS Charities mission. Determined to find Andy, they drove around near the area where they first met him. At their first stop, they found a family that had two deaf children who knew Andy.

“We decided to do something about those deaf children,” said Jim. “We worked with a government office called CONADIS (Consejo Nacional de Discapacidad), a wheelchair projects partner with LDS Charities. We then took Roberto Brazoban, a CONADIS official, with us back to Andy’s village, where he took the names of 10 deaf children. Then, the local Rotary Club helped us contact people at the Ministry of Education, where we presented the names of the deaf students. Soon, we had a classroom and instructors for those deaf students.”

Before James and Christy left the Dominican Republic, Gordon collected enough donations to hire a contractor colleague to build a two-classroom annex for the over-crowded school complete with computers, TV screens and other school supplies to facilitate providing space for the deaf children to be taught how to sign, read and write.

One challenge emerged when the teachers needed help with curriculum. Jim and Christy contacted the Santa Rosa School for the Deaf in Santo Domingo and discovered they were trying to develop a symposium to help deaf educators learn to teach deaf students more effectively.

“We had heard about Ruth Kartchner, a Chilean native living in Arizona, who had organized a qualified team of deaf educators from several countries. LDS Charities, Santa Rosa and the Ministry of Education collaborated with Ruth to fund the first symposium of deaf educators in the Dominican Republic,” Jim said. “What started as help for a deaf young man on the beach became an annual international symposium to help deaf children.”

Charity Anywhere also sponsors a nutrition program in Guatemala. They began in a rural community about five hours outside of Guatemala City. The children were always sick and malnourished.

“The mothers didn’t know why their children were malnourished,” explained Gordon. “The first thing we did was teach them about the little bugs in the water that make the children sick. Then, we supplied them with water filters and taught them how to use them.”

They also contacted Yvonne Sinclair, the director of Narú Guatemala, a Guatemalan nonprofit association (https://naruguatemala.org/), and invited her to help them. She taught the women about Incaperina, a mush meal for babies, children and adults. Once each mother completed 10 short videos in their native language, the mothers participated in a cap and gown graduation ceremony.

Gordon’s friend purchased a farm there, created an outdoor kitchen and taught the mothers how to raise vegetables. “Once they learn how to grow vegetables, they cook them in the open kitchen and eat them. They then go home and do the same with their family and village,” Gordon said. “Now, these smart, wise mothers are changing the nutrition culture in their communities.”

After establishing a nutrition program in Guatemala, Charity Anywhere was contacted by a man in Uganda whose village was also suffering from malnutrition. “We decided to duplicate our Guatemala malnutrition program in the Uganda village,” Gordon said. “By working closely with hospitals and medical people there, we have now duplicated the program in two places in Uganda.”

Like all humanitarian groups, volunteers play a key role in providing valuable help and care. Two such volunteers are Dr. Richard Hopkins, a retired radiologist, and his wife Lisa, an instructional technologist. As a young man, Richard went on medical/dental missions with his father, an orthodontist. Because it was a great experience for him, Richard wanted his children to have similar experiences.

“As a family, we went on several medical trips to Peru, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic,” Richard said. “Our children have turned out well, and they loved going!”

Richard and Lisa recently returned from a Dominican Republic trip. During a five-day clinic, Richard taught local doctors how to use a newly donated ultrasound machine. “I shared my lifetime case files with photos, now converted to PDF files, and taught them how to use them to understand ultrasounds,” Richard said.

Two other volunteers — Don Wadsworth, a former road construction supervisor, and his wife, Becky, a former reading teacher — heard about what Jim and Christy Benedict were doing for Charity Anywhere. Becky asked Christy if they took people with them on projects. Christy told her yes.

“I have always wanted to go and do some service,” Becky said. “This allowed us to help in some small way. Although we weren’t medical people, we were still able to help check in people, and Don was able to help with the eyeglass project. We came home with a whole different outlook, realizing we should be helping other people. We are now planning another trip.”

Going on humanitarian trips forever changes the minds and hearts of the volunteers. “On one trip, a family came to Mexico to celebrate grandpa’s 70th birthday,” Gordon said. “The family of 45 built two homes, completed an eye project and did other humanitarian projects. The family said it was the best experience they had done together.”

After a 16-year-old young man went on one of the Charity Anywhere youth camps to Mexico, he returned home to his parents, who were waiting for him to tell them what happened. Instead, he walked through his house, spent some time in his room, returned to the living room and said to his parents, “We have way too much stuff!” The mother then later said to Gordon, “What have you done to my son? He has changed!”

To Gordon, Christy, Jim and many others who have served through Charity Anywhere, the energy people feel from their volunteer work is infectious, and they would love to share it.

To connect with Charity Anywhere, email Gordon at gordon@charityanywhere.org or call 208-404-6304. Contributions may be made via Venmo @CharityAnywhere or by mail at Charity Anywhere, 1381 Woods Drive, Bountiful, UT 84010.