By converting old shipping containers into the stores, we will have a secure and solid structure for a reasonable price.
 

The containers will be roofed to protect them from the sun, and also to provide a pavilion area for fellowship at the store.
 

It is our hope that the store will be a central part of the community: providing a much needed service, allowing the missionary to work among the people instead of out in a field farming all day, and provide income for the missionary and mission agency.
 

Each month we visit our missionaries to encourage and support them.  We will now combine these visits by re-stocking their store from the missions central store in the capital city.
 

Instead of using the "one pot" accounting system used in West Africa, we will use the "two pot" system.  When the missionary sells an item, he will look up the item and see how much money goes in "his pot" and how much money goes in the "business pot".  He is free to spend the money in "his pot", but the money in the other pot can not be touched and will be used to re-stock from the warehouse each month.
 

The mission agency and local churches will be working in the capital city to make sure we can provide the best prices for our products.  We want out stores to be competitive with the other stores that are run by foreigners from the surrounding Islamic nations.
 

The stores will provide other services that will help the community. Some ideas we have are a peanut sheller.  Check it out at: http://www.fullbellyproject.org/ 
Clean drinking water from a quality well, small pharmacy, and an ordering service where villagers can request larger items from the city to be delivered when we come to re-stock the store.
 

The reason these stores are called "Stores of Life" is that their main purpose is to provide a platform for the missionary to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them and to start a local church.  A quality life on this earth is one thing, but life eternal with God is far more amazing than anything we can offer or sell in our stores.
 

It is our desire to see these stores not only sustain the missionary or pastor in that community, but to also help start other stores in other villages...thus helping to place missionaries across West Africa.