Last Lessons #71 - MOSHI

 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:5-7

To continue the narrative of our mission experience in Africa:

After living in Bumbuli, Tanzania (then Tanganika), we came home for furlough. After a month in Washington DC while Bob worked at Walter Reed Hospital, Bob left to raise funds for a hospital in Tanzania and the children and I went to live with my parents in Miami. We put Annie into a school there for first grade.

The children and I stayed in Miami for nine months, but Bob needed to be in Africa because he was in the process of working with the Tanzanian Minister of Health and the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, Northern District, Stephano Moshi, to plan for a referral hospital in Moshi. Therefore, we returned to Africa and spent our next four years in Moshi, a town on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. We had a nice enough house with a spectacular view of the mountain. Mt. Kilimanjaro is 19,341 ft. high, and the top is covered with snow year-round. The most beautiful place I have ever lived.

My job in helping my husband was to be his secretary, entertain government and church officials, architects, and host missionaries. We very rarely sat down to a meal without guests in our house. I was also able to watch and help Bob go over hospital plans again and again until they were perfect. By the end of our time in Moshi, Bob had raised over six million dollars (a huge amount in those days) and had a beautiful plan for a 450-bed hospital named The Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC). To this day, this hospital is the finest in Tanzania, and serves all East Africa. It truly is a Christian hospital that shows Africans God’s love in concrete.

Something that was very painful for me was the loss of both my parents while we lived in Moshi. My mother died of cancer at age 67 and my father from a heart attack at age 72. I was not able to be at the funeral of either of them. My consolation is that they were both faithful Christians and I know where they are – waiting for me.

What God made clear to me in Moshi was the need for good education for children. When we first arrived in Moshi, I was told that we should send our seven-year-old Annie to the mission boarding school because that was the only place where she could get an

English language education. The problem was that Kiamboi was ten hours drive away! I cannot tell you what a difficult decision we faced. I struggled and prayed to God that he would not make us send our little girl away. In the end, I surrendered to what I thought was God’s will and sewed name tags into every piece of her clothing. We talked non-stop to Annie about how wonderful it would be for her at that school and how great it would be for her to come home every three months for school vacation. Just two days before she was to leave for school, someone told me that the little Kibo International School in Moshi would need to close for lack of a teacher. What?!!! I was a teacher and so I went to work! Furthermore, the Kibo school was within walking distance of our house. I taught there for four years and one of my students was Annie. Kathy and Tova went to a kindergarten/early grades school started by some Americans in Moshi. God always does what is best for his own children.

Bob and I had gone to Africa as missionaries to help in the ways that the people needed. Bob was a doctor, and he not only healed the sick, he founded a large hospital. That effort put us in contact with church leaders and national presidents. We watched East Africa gain independence and were introduced to the presidents of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. All this would be used in later years as Rafiki was established.

During those nine years, I learned why God sent me to Africa. He was preparing me for how he would someday enable me to help Africans know him and to raise their standard of living. Two things stand out:

1. In Bumbuli I learned to know God more fully, and for Africans to know him fully they needed Bibles and good Bible studies.

2. In Moshi I learned that to raise the standard of living for Africans, they needed quality education.

I am a slow learner, so God had to not only tell me, but show me, what I was to do with my life. Otherwise, I would have had no idea! And there was still a lot for me to learn before Rafiki was even a thought. But God is patient, and he knew exactly what he was doing.

He knows what his plans for you are too and I love it when you tell me.

P.S. I will not be writing my blog during the Christmas holidays, but God willing, will be back with you in January.

Last Lessons #70 - BUMBULI

“You make known to me the path of life, in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”  Psalm 16:11

The Lord graciously takes us to places where he can teach us the most important lessons of our lives.  In the 1960s when we lived in Bumbuli, Tanzania, I learned many things.  I learned how to:

• Cook on a wood stove
• Make bread and mayonnaise and marshmallows
• Cook and can the wild game meat for which we hunted
• Buy fresh eggs at my door by putting them in water to make sure they did not float
• Strain out debris from fresh milk and boil it so we could drink it
• Manage servants who chopped wood, did laundry, and cooked for us
• Teach English to medical assistants at the hospital
• Take care of three bright and active daughters

Furthermore, I learned to know Africans.  I learned how gentle they were, how hard working, and how loyal they were.  I learned to love them as friends and as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Some of them are the best friends I have even to this day.  You can read about a few of them in HUMBLE HEROES available from Rafiki (www.rafikifoundation.org)

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  Matthew 5:6

The most important lesson God taught me at Bumbuli was that he would be with me and he was all I needed.  There were times during our four years in Bumbuli when I was very lonely and felt spiritually starved.  Bob spent much time traveling to remote clinics to see patients who couldn’t come to the hospital and he travelled to America and Europe to raise money to replace Bumbuli’s mud brick hospital with one made of real burned bricks.  And, by the way, he was successful in accomplishing that.  But he was gone so much of the time, and I missed him terribly.  I was lonely especially because for the first two years there was only one American family on our station.  After that, there were none.  But mostly I was spiritually starved.  The church services were all in Swahili and, of course, we had no TV, no radio, no computers.  We didn’t even have books because the box we had shipped containing our books and household goods was soaked on the ship and the contents completely ruined.  But true to his word, God didn’t leave me because I had brought one book in my hand luggage – my Bible.

One time during our four years in Bumbuli the Lutherans sent out a pastor to give a conference to the missionaries in the area.  It lasted for four days and although I was in charge of seeing that food was served to all the participants, I soaked up the teaching.  I think I cried the whole time because I was starving for the Word of God, and finally I was being fed.

What did I learn in a more profound way?  That God is with me and he is enough.  That he speaks to me through his Word – the Bible. 

But what I learned was that it wasn’t just my needs that mattered.  My goal in being a missionary was to help others know God and so God showed me the needs in stark reality.  The only way to know God is through the Bible.  There were so few Bibles in Tanzania, even in Swahili, and no Bible studies that I knew about.  I had no idea how to help the situation.  How could I as a missionary wife and a mother of three do anything useful in Africa?  All I knew was that I wanted to know God and help others know him, even if I felt helpless.  I guess that is where God wanted me to be – helplessly dependent on him. 

After four years in Bumbuli, we returned home for furlough before going back to Africa for another term.  I have learned many lessons along the way but now these many years later, my goal is still to know God and help others know him. 

I hope you take time to think through the lessons God has taught you.  Maybe you could write them down for your children and grandchildren to read.   

Last Lessons#69 - KIDS

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.”  Psalm 127:3

Something very influential happened in my life before we moved on from London to Tanzania.  Bob and I (along with our 2-year-old Annie) were privileged to attend Westminster Chapel in London where we heard Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preach.  Even though the chapel was not heated, we wrapped up warmly and listened to the best sermons I had ever heard. I bought a book by him called LET NOT YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED.  It helped me so much that I bought all his books that I could get my hands on.  They set my course for reading the best Christian books.  I highly recommend anything written by Lloyd-Jones.    

That was in England, but when we arrived in Tanzania (at that time called Tanganyika), we were sent to Tanga to study Swahili.  Tanga is located on the coast of the Indian Ocean and almost on the Equator.  It was hot!  We stayed in a small house next to the missionary couple who would teach us Swahili.  Five days later, during the night, I experienced severe abdominal pain and my doctor- husband Bob diagnosed appendicitis.  As soon as it was daylight, the missionaries (the Bernanders) drove us to the British government hospital where I was admitted.  I won’t go into detail, but my surgery was a terrible experience because I was three months pregnant and the British surgeon was a butcher.  Through that ordeal God was merciful and I knew it. 1) He saved my unborn baby and 2) he gave me Christian nurses aides who were kind and bathed me twice a day to keep me cool in Tanga’s heat.  These nurses aides had just been trained in the very hospital (five hours drive away) where Bob would be working.  Who would have thought!

After a short Swahili training, we arrived at our station Bumbuli in the Usambara Mountains.  The Lutherans had a mud-brick hospital in this beautiful location where medical assistants were trained.  Bumbuli is about 4,000 ft elevation so it was always cool.  Interestingly, African violets were first found on these mountains and we were able to go out and pick wild violets.  The soil is rich and there is enough rain so that flowers proliferate.  I could not have lived in a more beautiful spot.

Our first house was small and mud brick with tin roof and about 50 feet from the hospital.  Kathy was born in the operating room in that hospital in 1958.  Yes, she not only survived my appendectomy, she was a beautiful heathy little girl with lots of dark hair.   

After Kathy was born, we moved into a larger house (still mud brick, wood floors, and tin roof) just across the road.  In January of 1961 Bob picked me up and carried me to the OR of the hospital where he delivered Tova, our third little girl.  It was quite an occasion for a white baby to be born in that hospital and all the hospital staff was present to watch since it was 1a.m. and they were not at work.  Not much privacy, but at that point I wasn’t concerned with privacy.  After the delivery one of the missionary nurses put Tova and me in a small room in her house to recuperate.  That same morning at 8 o’clock, Bob walked in with my typewriter so that I could get some letters out for him!  Typical man on a mission!  But he was very happy with three little girls and so was I.

Children are a gift from God, but they are not ours.  They are placed in our care to raise, not to own.  God owns them and he tells us how to raise them in the Bible.  We are told to baptize them.  Annie had been baptized in Maryland, but Kathy and Tova were baptized in Bumbuli with all our African friends to celebrate. 

I have learned that God is the one who gives us fruit to love, nurture and raise for him – whether fruit of the womb, or foster children, or little African orphans. We are to love them, raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and then present them back to him to use as he pleases. 

I am so grateful to God for my kids.  I trust you are too!