A “Centavo” for Your Thoughts

We have discovered an aspect of the mission field that we had never considered before. Who would have thought that currency exchange rates would have such a drastic impact on ministry? All of the support raised for CLM and its missionaries are in dollars. Each month, those dollars are exchanged into Brazilian reals. In the past two months, the real/dollar exchange rate has dropped from 2.12 to 1.94—only a difference of 18 hundredths, so no big deal, right? Well, for every thousand dollars sent, CLM received $88 less this month than last. It is projected to go as low as 1.8. If that happens, we lose another $78 for every thousand dollars. In 2004, the exchange rate was around 3 to 1. CLM receives the same amount now as they did then, but their buying power has been drastically cut. To make matters worse, we bought our first tank of gas the other day and realized (after several mathematical calculations) that we paid $5.17 per gallon! But hey, look on the bright side...beans and rice are pennies a kilo!