Praise God! After the July 15 inauguration of our Faith Dialogue and Research Center, we held our first baptism on July 16 with four precious souls. We thank all of you for your prayers and support. A special thanks to our brothers and sisters from the Midland, Michigan, Seventh-day Adventist Church who adopted our building project and generously provided 93 percent of the budget to purchase the land and build the center.
The inauguration brought together 80 people from the Kandi community including cultural, civil and religious leaders. Cultural leaders included the Kandi Sunon (Kandi landlord), the Baparape (Kandi social manager), and the Rouga (king of the nomadic tribe of the Fulani in Kandi). Civil authorities included a representative of the mayor’s office. Religious leaders included our Adventist mission president and secretary treasurer, some representatives of the head imam of Kandi, two priests representing the Roman Catholic bishop, and four pastors from other Christian churches. In total, there were 38 Muslims and 42 Christians from seven different Christian churches including 13 Adventist members.
We started by presenting the three-part goal of the center: to promote mutual understanding between religions, to reduce ignorance and prejudices among different faiths and to facilitate collaboration for humanitarian services in the community.
Next, we presented the motto of the center—its three foundational attitudes, which we call the H2R—honesty, humility, respect—that will guide the activities of the center. Some speeches and prayers followed, and a small, culturally important supper was served at the end of the program. As the African proverbs say, “One shares food, not words,” and “Those who are united in eating are united in life.”
People’s comments after the program showed that they were impressed and glad to have witnessed this first-time event in Kandi. I was touched by a testimony one Muslim leader shared, expressing his hope that our center would help break down prejudices that divide Muslims and Christians. I hope to share more about his remarks in another article. We were so happy to hear this testimony, and we praised God for His guidance.
The following day, Sabbath, July 16, we had our first worship at the center. Our local mission administrators were our special visitors in addition to other interested people. After the mission president’s sermon, we went to the dam five miles from Kandi for our first baptism. 15 people were scheduled to be baptized that day, but 11 of them, all from one family in Sonsoro, could not make the journey to Kandi due to the rainy-season weather. In a future article, I will tell you more about the Sonsoro branch Sabbath School God opened for us providentially among this family of more than 50 members.
The four precious souls baptized that day were Rigobert (Lateef), our first Dendi convert, Richard, Narcisse and Marina (Elmire’s relative who lives with us).
Thank you for your prayers, encouragement and support. As a team, we are moving forward. Our next baptism is scheduled for December, 2011. Thank you so much, and God bless you for being on our team.

• Twitter