We’d like to tell you everything that’s happened this month bad and good (Partly because some of the bad stuff has been some of the “coolest” stuff like setting beside the road in 112 degree weather for 5 hours waiting for help because the rear wheels on our vehicle “froze up” and then driving over 100 miles home with no brakes…at night!), but we’ve had to whittle what we’re going to report down to just a story or two.
          Among our most faithful members at Babo is an eleven year old boy named Abou. Abou is very sharp and attends both the children’s and the adult’s class when we’re there. Everyone calls his dad the “seller” because he has a small business in the closest town to the village. By Babo standards his dad is the rich guy.
          A couple of weeks back when we had our dedication service for the new building I announced that we would only be baptizing those 12 and over the first round, and that we wanted to wait awhile before baptizing anyone younger than that. Abou and a friend came to us about 11:00 that night a little disappointed because he had intended to be among the church’s first official members. I had thought about Abou when I set the age limit believing he was old enough, because again, no one has shown themselves to be more serious. When I realized he was less than 12 Pierre and I (Our ministry student from and the future pastor at Babo) discussed what the consequences might be if we considered baptizing Abou and his friend Ignasse. Pierre was confident that no one would accuse us of being inconsistent because everyone was aware of Abou’s faithfulness.
          That being the case, I told Pierre we needed to question him just one more time to make sure that he “got it”. Abou’s friend needed a guidance in responding to the questioning, but when I asked Abou if he understood what it meant to be saved he said: “Missionary, I’ve trusted Christ with all of my heart”. Wait a minute, that’s not the story yet! The story is what happened last week when Pierre got to the village to teach for the weekend. Abou’s dad approached Pierre to tell him that he and Abou had had a heart to heart talk and that Abou had told him that he’d found the way of truth and that if his father were unwilling to turn from his error to Christ that he’d not be seeing heaven.
         Pierre was justifiably nervous as Abou’s dad explained, because that kind of “disrespect” (courage) in Burkina is extremely rare. But as Abou’s dad continued, it became obvious that Abou’s courage had not offended him, but that he’d been impressed by how sure Abou was that he’d found the truth. That being the case, he didn’t tell Abou he had to stop coming to church, but told his other children that they needed to be dressed and ready to follow Abou to church on Sunday morning.
           The Seller hasn’t been to church yet, but we’ve little doubt that we’ll soon be having a conversation with him about how he can be sure he’ll be joining Abou in heaven.
          We don’t want to spoil that story with discouraging news, but we do need prayer right now because the falling American Dollar and the soaring cost of living in Burkina has finally reached even us. Having just completed our second building project in the last several months, we’re out of money and our support is no longer enough to keep up. We researched our records earlier this week and discovered that, based on the average exchange rate in 2005 and the current exchange rate, we’re now losing $2,400 per month in financial support compared to our support level in 2005 and we’ve not lost a single supporting church. Our $950 per month personal salary now has a value of just $600. We’ve cut back on everything we possibly can and are now in the process of selling our Land Cruiser so that we can buy a nice small four door four wheel drive pickup in order to reduce our fuel cost (Diesel fuel is about $6US per gallon).
          We never thought we’d see ourselves hurting financially in Burkina because you’ve all been so faithful, but in spite of your faithfulness, the economic dynamics in the world are changing and there’s little we can do but hope that God will reverse the current trend. Please just pray that the fall of the dollar will reverse itself soon. We have too much yet to accomplish to even think about the possibility of leaving the field and are currently too entrenched in what we’re doing to think about coming home, even for a short time, to raise more money (A round trip ticket would cost about $2,500US). Doing so might well undo what we’ve done over the last year. That being the case, we’re just stuck depending on God, so talk to Him about it, would ya?
          We appreciate you all and are craving a set down dinner with you at an average American steakhouse, so you can pray about that too, if you’d like.

Partners,
John & Tammy Cooley