Dear Ayizo Prayer Partners,

~My mother, Lucille Burns, is home from the hospital as of Sunday afternoon and starting the recovery process!

~Jeff returned to Cote d’Ivoire from Benin without incident on Saturday night after waiting at the airport on standby for several hours.

~The meetings with the Benin Baptist Union Friday night and Saturday went well. The men are catching the vision to decentralize and re organize their structure in an indigenous fashion, which is an answer to prayer!

Please pray:

~For Hubert, his two teenage girls, his church, his family, his friends, the Benin Baptists—healing, comfort, revival

Explanation:

About 6:00pm Saturday evening, while in the airport, Jeff talked with one of our good, dynamic, dearly loved friends in the Benin, one of the Benin Baptist leaders and one of the few theologians we have, just to greet him. At the time of their conversation Hubert and his wife Gilberte were in a taxi traveling from Bohicon to Cotonou about a 2 ½ hour trip. Hubert and Gilberte have been the main people involved in setting up and teaching in the Bohicon Bible school. His wife has a seminary degree and the two have worked very closely together in creating theological education through Bible stories in Fon for the Fon pastors. You’ve heard about the school and the amount of suffering the students/pastors were willing to undergo to spend one week a month memorizing and writing down 10 stories from the Bible and then discussing the theological applications. The students participated in this study for 3 full years. Imagine having memorized that much of the Bible! As you know, just before coming here to Cote d’Ivoire we went to the first graduation ceremony of the school. Hubert had been the director. He recently accepted to become the pastor of the very first Baptist church in Benin, Etoile (aye-toe-all) Rouge—one of our largest churches and most influential. We went out to eat pounded yam with Hubert and Gilberte just days before leaving Benin for Cote d’Ivoire.

Saturday morning Hubert traveled with his wife up to Bohicon to officially transfer the directorship of the school over to Marcel. Saturday evening Jeff talked with them just before boarding the plane.

Last night, Sunday, we received an e-mail from Bob and Becky Couts in Benin that Saturday evening, possibly just after talking with Jeff, on the way to Cotonou from Bohicon Hubert and Gilberte’s taxi was in a terrible accident—Gilberte was killed. Hubert has two broken arms, a broken jaw and is in serious condition. We are grieving. All of Benin Baptists are grieving. This is a huge loss. All we can pray is that the revival we’ve been asking God for in Benin would break out through this tragedy.

Yours in Christ,

Barbara and Jeff