October 20, 1999
Shamrock kids buy cows for missions
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___While boys and girls of West Texas already know the value of a good heifer, some are learning that value is magnified for missionaries among the Fulani people of Niger, Africa.
___Kris Riggs, former pastor of Eleventh Street Baptist Church in Shamrock before leaving for the mission field, already had been able to purchase a cow with the offerings given by the Royal Ambassadors boys' camp and children attending Vacation Bible School at First Baptist Church in Booker.
___Glenda Adams, a member of Eleventh Street, felt using the children's VBS offering at her church to buy another cow would be a good way to show the children a concrete example of how missionaries can use their offerings. The 73 children who attended raised enough money for three cows.
___Riggs, an International Mission Board missionary, said it is hard to explain to people in America the importance of owning a cow among the Fulani, a herding people who drink the milk, but would never admit to eating beef.
___"The cows are like part of the family, each having a name," Riggs explained. "They are so important that during our language study we were often teased when they told us we couldn't speak Fulfulde unless we owned a cow."
___Cows also allowed the missionaries to join in the culture's traditions.
___"We learned of a tradition among the people called a habanaya, whereby they offer a cow to another family in need. This cow is loaned to them until it calves. The new calf is retained by the borrowing family and the mother is returned," Riggs related.
___"As we came to understand the significance of these issues, we decided that it would be beneficial for us to purchase a cow and give it as a habanaya."
___The first heifer bought with the money from the children of Eleventh Street Church was given to a local pastor who recently had made a job change and taken a reduction in pay, earning only 20 percent of his previous income.
___The Fulani are a nomadic people that number between 18 million and 30 million and cover much of the northwestern half of Africa.
___Riggs asks Texas Baptists to pray for this large group of people, the vast majority of whom never have heard of Jesus.
___This is an urgent need in world evangelization, he said, telling a story to illustrate.
___Each day, the Fulani women must search out water, sometimes having to lower a pail with a rope 80 feet into a well to reach water. So a local proverb says, "He whose mother-in-law falls in the well doesn't ask the price of the rope."
___"In other words, you can't attach a price to what's important; you do what must be done to save her," Riggs explained. "There are millions of Fulani who are precious to our Heavenly Father. If we are to reach these who are important to him, we can't ask the 'price of the rope.'"
___Heidi Soderstrom of the International Mission Board also contributed to this report.
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!