Alabama couple sees where offering dollars go in Africa

Just as Elaine Cook hit her 60s, she had to learn how to drive all over again — with a stick shift in her left hand on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road.
   
“I had only ever driven an automatic before,” Cook said. “But that’s one of the fun things about doing missions work later in life — you get to learn lots of things you never thought you’d have to learn.”
   
Going to serve as missionaries in Johannesburg, South Africa, in March 2004 was definitely a shifting of gears mentally for Cook and her husband, Darrell, who retired after 40 years as a businessman in Birmingham to follow the couple’s call to missions. 
   
They signed on with the International Mission Board’s (IMB) Masters Program, a short-term service assignment for those aged 50 and above who want to work on the international missions field.
   
“We had given to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (LMCO) for years, and we felt that, in addition to giving, it was time for us to go,” Darrell Cook said.
   
After the couple served as church planters for six months in the city, he was moved into an administrative role — regional treasurer.
   
“One of the joys of working in the treasurer’s office is that you get to see firsthand how the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering is used,” he said. “We get to see what the Lord is doing all the way from Angola to Mozambique and the Indian Ocean islands.”
   
His job is logistical — he’s responsible for getting those LMCO dollars to some 100 missionaries across the region who need supplies, vehicles, telephones, rent and fuel.
   
“Our challenge is to get them on the field and keep them there, using our resources the best way we possibly can,” he said.
   
When those missionaries come through Johannesburg, Elaine Cook invites them over for a meal at the couple’s second-story flat in a suburb of the city. 
   
Later she links up with some of them for help with her hospital ministry — visiting seriously ill patients, many of whom are dying of AIDS.
   
“Johannesburg is a central place with a good hospital, and people come in for medical treatment from all over Africa,” she said. “Many of the children will be infected (with AIDS). We try to take them small gifts and take tracts and packages of peanuts to the adults.”
   
AIDS is the No. 1 killer of children under 5 years old in the region, and 40 percent of schoolteachers in South Africa are infected with the HIV virus, she said.
   
“Missionaries in the area try to reach people with True Love Waits and change the way they live,” she said. “It doesn’t get them saved, but it might keep them alive long enough to accept the gospel.”
   
Her hospital ministry is something she never would have pictured herself doing while growing up as a member of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church, Homewood, in Birmingham Baptist Association. 
   
Back then, missions seemed very detached — it was something for other people to do, not her.
   
“When you had a missionary come to visit, they seemed superhuman,” she said. “Now we know missionaries are just plain-old people like everybody else.”
   
The face of missions is changing now, according to Darrell Cook. 
   
“There is a greater emphasis on volunteers and more are responding,” he said. “More churches are getting involved, too, and it is so rewarding to see how God is working and how Baptists are cooperating not just through giving but through working, too.”
   
He noted that he is encouraged by how intimately involved in missions Alabama Baptists are. “Even small, rural churches are more involved in missions than ever. They know what’s going on,” he said.
   
Because of this, he said he knows Baptists can be counted on to come through for international missions this Christmas.
   
“Southern Baptists have been so generous with supporting relief efforts this year (for Hurricane Katrina), and it has been questioned what effect that will have on the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering,” he said. “But we can trust that the Southern Baptists who responded to that need will also respond to the need for missions.”
   
The Cooks have one more year left on their term in Africa, and they both say they will keep on enjoying seeing the gifts of Baptists go to work there.
   
“If you are retired, you have your health and you want to do something besides play golf every day, the Masters Program is the way to go,” Elaine Cook said. 
   
She added that she is inspired by getting to work with and watch missionaries who have been on the field for long stretches of service — such as Alabama’s Jim and Brenda Brock, who have served in Africa for more than 20 years.
   
“They are very dedicated and you never hear complaints about the circumstances they live in (in South Africa),” she said.
   
Darrell Cook agreed, saying that he and his wife may decide to join them for a second tour of duty in Africa — or they may decide to go somewhere new.
   
“It’s been the best two years of our life,” he said. “We have got one more year, and after that, we’ll see what God wants us to do.”